


Forward, Back

by perniciousLizard



Series: Fired Up and Bone Weary [32]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Background Character Death, Family, Friendship, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Minor Alphys/Undyne, Original Character(s), Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Years Later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 40,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11522958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perniciousLizard/pseuds/perniciousLizard
Summary: Knowing what’s going to happen doesn’t mean Sans can stop it.  Maybe he could’ve put it off forever.  Sans decides to go.





	1. Part One - Forward

**Author's Note:**

> This story will be in three parts.

Sans adjusted the wood base of his homemade telescope.  The night was sharply cold - almost cold enough to make his bones ache.  It was the kind of night when the sky was open and clear, and innumerable stars were visible from the comfort of his own backyard.  

Something was stuck. The base wouldn’t rotate properly.  

Sans shrugged and sat back down.  Everything, other than the lenses, was made out of scrap pieces he’d found around, so it wasn’t a huge hit to his ego that something wasn’t working right.  He thought about moving back inside and settling into his butt dent on the couch.  He could watch something on TV, but it was too good a night and moving seemed like a lot of work.  

The last light on in the house behind him switched off.  Papyrus was either sleeping, or whatever he was up to he didn’t need a light for.  

Sans tried to get the base to rotate from where he was sitting.  His magic almost tipped the whole junk-scope over, but when he got over there and shoved it back upright, something snapped free and everything worked again.  

Maybe he should’ve just given it a kick to start with.  

Clouds were rolling across the sky from the horizon.  Jupiter was in a clear portion of the sky, so Sans used it to check and make sure he hadn’t damaged anything knocking his telescope around.  

He tracked the planet until clouds blocked his view entirely.  He stepped back.  Half the sky was black, now.  Sans watched the rest of the stars disappear, wondering if it was going to snow on him.  He shoved his hands into his coat pockets.  He wanted to go inside, but suddenly found it difficult to look away.  

Dark and darker.  Were those clouds?  Sans thought his eyes had adjusted, but when he looked down at his own hand, he couldn’t see the ground under his sneakers.  His hand was white bone shining in nothingness.  He rubbed his eye sockets.  Dread came over him like a heavy blanket, smothering.  

He looked back up at the sky.  It was empty.  The stars had cleared out, and it was black space from end to end.  

Sans tried to say something, but the darkness swallowed his words.  

He stepped back.  Someone was watching him.  He heard a noise – an almost painful static hissing in his skull – and it cut off, abruptly.  He stepped back again and his leg hit his lawn chair.  He could see the grass and the patio and when he looked up, the sky was filled with stars.  He couldn’t find a single cloud. 

“heh.”  His own voice startled him.  "checking up on me, huh?"

He heard a car come down the gravel driveway at the front of the house.  

"stop by sometime.  grilbz’ll pour you a drink and papyrus’ll make dinner.  you’d be proud of him.”  Sans went over to his telescope and found Jupiter again.  He tried to make out specific details, letting that calm him down.  The lens went dark and he heard static, distant. He thought he felt a cold hand on his shoulder, so cold it seeped every last bit of warmth and energy out of his bones.

Then, that passed, too.  He was shuddering over his telescope, trying to stay on his feet.  The back door opened, and the space around him was almost immediately warm and light.  

“…having fun?”  Grillby asked.

“it’s a party,” Sans said, careful.

Grillby walked over. He saw something in Sans’ expression, and flickered in concern. “…cold?”  

“not anymore.”  Sans winked at him.  Grillby didn’t look any less worried.  "eh, think my joints don’t like the cold anymore."

"…you’re shaking,“ Grillby realized.  "Come inside.”  He took Sans’ arm.  

Sans was unceremoniously pulled back inside the house.  The normal mess of their living room - toys scattered around where Papyrus hadn’t had a minute to clean them up, a children’s book folded open on the coffee table, chisp crumbs on the arm of the couch by where Sans usually sat - grounded him.  

“You were just cold?”  Grillby asked.  He didn’t sound like he believed it.  

“they call that the cold, hard truth,” Sans said, snickering.  "but, nah."   Grillby wasn’t buying what he was selling.  "i guess i nodded off right on my feet.  had a weird dream.”

“A dream?”

“yeah.”  He shrugged.  "scared the marrow outta me."

Grillby was still gripping his arm.  He brought Sans over to the couch and set him down on it.  "What was it?”

Sans considered his options.  He went for the truth, which sounded fake enough to be a dream.  "for a sec, i thought dad was hanging around."  He shuddered, again, involuntarily.  He should have picked something other than the truth.  

"…that was scary?"

"uh.  look, there’s a reason he doesn’t come by, grillbz.  it’d be… _something_ , if he showed up.”

He nodded.  

“ok?”  

“That’s the truth?”

Sans looked down at his lap.  Right.  It was close enough, he thought.  And what was truth, really?   _Great_.  He was making excuses, again, and lying ‘cause it was easier.  "maybe.  mostly."

"…mostly."

"ok.  maybe…halfway true.”  He rubbed his head.  He expected Grillby to be pissed, but he didn’t even move his hand off of Sans’ arm.  “just don’t want to think about it.  ask me again in, i dunno, a couple days.”  

“Take your time.”  

Sans was skeptical.   He scanned Grillby’s expression, trying to read anger or irritation off of him.  Grillby was leaning in, radiating concern over anything else.  Sans must’ve been a real mess when he found him.  

“don’t give me that or i’ll never get around to it,” Sans said, nudging him.  

“Take a couple days.”

“smart.”  

The curtains were open on the window facing out back, and the outside lights were all off.  The blank black outside the window made Sans’ throat tighten. He turned away, suddenly interested in the rest of the room.  

“A distraction,” Grillby said, when he noticed Sans’ unease.  "……dinner?   What do you want?"

"hey, i’m not picky,” Sans said, grateful.  "but when you grill my steak, make sure it’s a hundred sixty degrees exactly on the inside.  and mash the potatoes, don’t smash 'em."

"…chicken, then."

"heh.”  

“No, really, what do you want?”  

“no idea what we’ve got.”

Grillby stood up.   “Let’s look.”  

He was doing his best to distract him.  That was cute.  Sans got up and followed Grillby into the kitchen.  


	2. Chapter 2

Sleeping during the day wasn’t an issue, but night was starting to be a big problem.  Sans had a lot of memories in the back of his skull that had taken this chance to start shouting and waving, trying to get his attention.  He quieted ‘em down with a 2 AM bowl of dry cereal and a marathon of the worst comedies of the last few years.  

Grillby was right on schedule when he asked Sans if he felt like talking about it, and Sans told him to ask again in a month.  He needed to quit putting it off, but he needed his head in order first.  

At least he didn't have to be by himself in the middle of the night.  Papyrus still thought sleep was a wasteful hobby for adults, and a boring necessity for the kids, so after some fussing around he sat down with Sans and complained about whatever was on the TV.   

“SANS, ARE YOU EVEN WATCHING THIS?  GIVE ME THE REMOTE IF YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION!”  

“ok,” Sans said.  He didn’t move.

Papyrus tried to grab it from him with the legendary dexterity, speed, and arm length of someone as obviously great as him, but Sans had set it just out of reach.  Papyrus had to get up and walk around the couch to get it.

“oh, you want this?  sorry, zoned out.”  Sans set the remote where Papyrus had been sitting.

“I REFUSE TO RUN AROUND THE COUCH FOR YOU, AGAIN!”  Papyrus marched back over and Sans moved the remote to the other side.  

“wait, you wanted it over here?”  

Papyrus stood directly in front of Sans.  

“hey.”

“IF YOU ARE 'zoned out’ AND NOT WATCHING TELEVISION, YOU SHOULD WATCH SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT!  LIKE ME!”  

“that makes sense,” Sans said.  

“AND LISTEN.  I HAVE SOMETHING I NEED TO ASK YOU.”  His expression changed.   Sans wished he had just given Papyrus the remote, because whatever it was his brother wanted to talk about, it wasn’t a joke.  He must have talked about what happened with Grillby. 

“yeah?  hey, first i got a question for you.”

“FINE.  GET IT OVER WITH.”  

“are you the dog star, bro?”

“I AM  _A_ STAR,” Papyrus said.  

“thought so. 'cuz you’re looking pretty  _sirius_  right now.”  

“SANS!  I  _DO_  EXPECT YOU TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!”

“got it.  sorry.”  Sans sighed.

“I KNOW YOU REQUIRE YOUR  _SPACE_.  BUT, BROTHER, WE ARE VERY CONCERNED."

"heh heh.”

“THAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE CONVERSATIONAL DEPTHS I AM WILLING TO FALL TO!  BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT MY BROTHER!  YOU COULD SAY THE AMOUNT OF CONCERN I AM TRYING TO EXPRESS IS...ASTRONOMICAL!  NYEH HEH HEH!”

“i appreciate that.”

“AS YOU SHOULD.”  Papyrus sat down.  The remote had moved itself back to his seat, and he accidentally changed the channel and muted the television without noticing.  "SANS."  He turned towards him, changing the channel again. 

"yeah.”  

“YOU HAVE NOT BEEN AT YOUR BEST, LATELY.”  

There was no way around it, really.  "sure, but it’s working itself out."

"GRILLBY MENTIONED THAT YOU HAD A BAD DREAM ABOUT OUR FATHER.”  

Sans let himself be talked into describing the “dream” a little more than he had for Grillby.  It was a good enough explanation for why he was going through a bad patch, and might keep Papyrus from pushing the issue.

Papyrus shifted while he listened, changing the channels a few more times.  "HMM.  THAT REMINDS ME OF A SIMILAR…DREAM I HAVE HAD.  EXCEPT I WAS AWAKE AT THE TIME?  I WONDER IF THERE IS A WORD FOR THOSE."

"when’d you have that?”  

“A FEW TIMES A YEAR FOR MANY YEARS,” Papyrus said.  "MINE DO NOT FRIGHTEN ME SO MUCH!  PROBABLY BECAUSE I AM SO BRAVE."

Sans nodded.  

"I WONDER IF HE IS TRYING TO CONTACT US AND LET US KNOW HE IS STILL WATCHING.”  

“if he’s listening in, it’d be rude to talk about him.”  

“PERHAPS.”  Papyrus was focusing on a spot over Sans’ shoulder.  "BUT I STILL WANT TO SAY THAT IF IT  _IS_  HIM, THEN THAT MEANS YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE FRIGHTENED!  YOU TOLD ME HE DID NOT ALWAYS COMMUNICATE WELL, SO HE IS JUST TRYING TO TELL US HE IS FINE BUT FORGETS HOW TO MAKE HIMSELF NOT LOOK ALARMING.  IT IS A COMMON PROBLEM!"

"right.  so, uh, you’re saying best case scenario here is that he’s actually creeping around and i didn’t just eat too much bad food.”  Sans thought a dream would be the better option, out of the two, but what did he know?  None of this made any difference.  He knew what was going on, and he was never going to tell Papyrus.  He didn’t like that Papyrus was seeing their dad around, but he couldn’t change that, either.  

“IF YOU THINK IT WAS YOUR POOR EATING HABITS AT FAULT, THERE IS A WAY TO CORRECT THAT.”

“eh.  rather be haunted.”  

“SANS!”  

“all the ghosts i’ve met are pretty ok.”  

“OF COURSE THEY ARE ALL PERFECTLY NICE.  UNDYNE’S OLD NEIGHBOR WROTE ME A MOTIVATING SONG LAST WEEK FOR WHEN I AM EXERCISING.  BUT THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT.  DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE IT WAS A DREAM?”  Papyrus looked lost, for a second.  Sans realized that he had been hoping he wasn’t the only one seeing Dad around.  

“eh, who knows. let’s not push at it.  coulda been him, or some, uh…piece of him.”

“DO YOU THINK HE IS TRYING TO TELL US SOMETHING IMPORTANT?”

“maybe he’s just checking up on us.”  

“THAT WOULD BE A VERY FATHERLY THING TO DO,” Papyrus said, nodding.  

“sure.”  Sans rubbed his head.  This conversation wasn’t helping his mood, much.  He kept seeing Dad’s face, that last time before he fell.  

Papyrus shifted a little closer, his tailbone changing the channel to a commercial for mysterious human hygiene products.  Papyrus didn’t notice anything that was happening on the television.  He put his bony arm around Sans’ shoulders.  "WELL.  I AM SURE HE WOULD NOT WANT TO SCARE YOU.  MAYBE IT  _WAS_  JUST A DREAM."

"yeah.”  

Papyrus never knew when to give up.  That was what was so great about him.  The only kind of giving up he believed in was giving up on giving up.  If there was a problem, there had to be a fix for it.  

Sans had told his brother a lot of things he never intended to, and Papyrus had been hurt but adjusted to whatever news Sans had for him.  He was a lot stronger than Sans had thought.  Or maybe he’d known Papyrus was that strong, but he just hadn’t been strong enough himself to see him hurting.  Either way, same result.  

Maybe it wasn’t that Papyrus couldn’t adjust.  Maybe it was still that same weakness on Sans’ part.  He couldn’t watch his brother struggle with the same thing he had.  There was no good way for it to resolve itself, when there was no real fix.  Either Papyrus gave up on something, or he hurt himself irreparably trying to put something back together that was broken forever.  You could tape a piece of paper back together, but you couldn’t tape together ashes if you burned it.  Sans didn’t want to watch Papyrus try to tape this particular piece of paper back together.

“what’re we watching, anyway?”  Sans asked.  

Papyrus glanced at the television.  "HOW WOULD I KNOW?"

"butt you’ve got the clicker,” Sans said.  

He patted at the couch next to himself, looking for it.  "NO, I DO NOT.  DID YOU LOSE IT?"  His eye sockets narrowed.  "OR IS THIS SOME FOOLISH JAPERY MEANT TO DISTRACT ME?”  

“both?  heh.”  Sans asked.  "look,  _i_ don’t have it."  He held up his hands.  

"I GUESS YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO LISTEN TO WHAT I AM SAYING TO YOU INSTEAD OF IGNORING ME AND WATCHING TELEVISION TO AVOID YOUR PROBLEMS.”

“nah.”  He shrugged.  "it’s just the same thing as it always is, bro. it’ll work itself out in a couple days.  sorry if you thought i was going to get over it sometime.  maybe i could, but getting over something sounds like effort, and i’m pretty lazy."

"SANS.  YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO TRY NOT TO LIE TO ME ANYMORE.”  

“uh, i’m not.”  He was leaving stuff out, but Papyrus knew he still did that.  "ok, i know where the remote is, butt it’s funnier if i don’t tell you right away."

"YOU–”  Papyrus looked like he was going to have an aneurysm right then and there.  He took a deep breath.  Sans thought he was probably counting to negative sixteen, to calm himself down.  "SANS, IF IT ALWAYS COMES BACK, HOW CAN I BELIEVE YOU WHEN YOU SAY IT WILL WORK ITSELF OUT IN A COUPLE DAYS?“

"right.  good point.”

“I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT!  I WANT YOU TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY, AND TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO TO HELP YOU!”  

“you can calm down and watch tv with me,” Sans said.  

“THAT IS JUST AVOIDING THE ISSUE.”  

“yup.”  

“AND THERE IS SOMETHING YOU ARE STILL NOT TELLING ME.  ABOUT THIS 'DREAM.’”  

“…yeah.  sorry.”  

Papyrus stood up with such force the television un-muted.  He didn’t notice.  "I AM MAKING US TEA!  DO YOU WANT CHAMOMILE OR PEPPERMINT!?"

"mint, sure, thanks.”  Papyrus always steeped the tea too long, until taking a sip of it was like getting punched in the mouth.  Sans decided he’d rather his face got mauled by peppermint that night.  

Papyrus glanced down before he marched off, noticing the remote control right under where he was sitting.  "SANS!  WHY CAN’T YOU TAKE ANYTHING SERIOUSLY?"  He started walking away before he was done yelling.  He threw his hands into the air in frustration, and then went into the kitchen. Sans could hear the tea kettle getting banged around.  

Sans shrugged and picked up the remote.  He flipped through the channels.

He heard a door open, quiet, but didn’t react to the noise.  If Papyrus had left the TV muted, he knew he would have heard a slight sloshing noise as the older kid slid over to the couch.  

"hey, kiddo,” Sans said, not looking away from the screen.  

She made a little bubbly noise of surprise.  

“sorry 'bout the  _bone_ _-_ _rattling_  noise out here on a school night.”  

Soozen shook her head and climbed up on the couch next to him.  "Why’s he mad?"

"no worries.  bro’s just gotta be everyone’s mom, sometimes.  clean your room, eat better, stop putting mustard in my boots – he just wants to be helpful.  makes him happy.”

“Mustard?” She giggled.  

“just as a random example, outta nowhere.”  He switched to a station showing old cartoons.  "hey, do me a favor.  stick around until bro gets back here and let him put you back to sleep.  he’ll feel better."

She nodded.  "I had a bad dream, too,” she said.  

“yeah?”  He’d wonder who told her about his dream, except Papyrus had kind of been talking his regular volume about it.  She was getting kind of sneaky about listening in on conversations, lately.  He’d been a little bit like that as a kid.  

“Yeah.  My teacher was there, but he had all these teeth and his eyes were glowy like…”  

“like, uh…” Sans pointed to his face.

“Like headlights!  He gave me all this homework.”  

“that’s the worst.  hey, look, razor teeth are no big deal for you.  sure, they look cool, but that’s melee damage, right?”

She brightened.  "I’m resistant to that!"

"so next bad dream, you don’t have to take anything from him.  no homework.  just tell him to get a life, ok.”

“Right!  I’ll put mustard in his shoes!”

“hey.  stealing jokes isn’t cool.”

“You said it was just an example, though.”  

“shoot.  you got me, kid.  why’re you so afraid of homework, when you’re so smart?”

“Because I hate it!”  

“BUT IT IS VERY IMPORTANT.  HOMEWORK IS JUST AN ENRICHING PUZZLE FOR YOUR MIND, TO HONE IT TO ITS UTMOST SHARPNESS.”  Papyrus came over and set two mugs of tea on the table.  

“plus it’s lots of fun.  like doing the crossword, right, bro?”  

“NO.  IF IT IS LIKE THAT, THEN I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOUR TEACHER!”  

Papyrus took Soozen back to her bedroom.  Sans tried a little of the tea.  It made his eye sockets water, but he couldn’t say it wasn’t good for taking his mind off of things.  He moved both the mugs back into the kitchen, wrote the letter “T” on two napkins, and put them on the table where the mugs had been.  He was staring blankly at the television by the time Papyrus returned.

 

-

 

Usually beer just knocked Sans out, but his body betrayed him and he stayed stubbornly awake.  Grillby was drinking, too, keeping well ahead of Sans while staying completely sober.  He had a bowl of flavored wood chips next to him.  Sans occasionally snatched one when Grillby wasn’t paying attention.  

“papyrus, he’s just too good,” Sans said.  "he just…grillbz…you get what i mean, right?“  

Grillby patted his hand.  

"can’t do that to him.”  

“He’s handled everything else.”

“‘cause of what it’d do to me.  god.  ok.  maybe it’ll help to get it off my rib cage.  but you gotta promise me you won’t spread this around, all right?”

He nodded.  

Sans poured himself another drink. “ok.  so you know about my dear ol’ dad and the lab accident that killed him.  'cept there’s a detail i left out. just one little thing.  no big deal.”  Sans knocked back his drink.

Grillby took Sans’ glass away from him and took his hand, again.  "Yes?“

"he’s not dead.”  

Grillby had taken his drink, but the last sip had done what it was supposed to.  It was easy to talk.  

Sans’ words lost coherence as he continued.  He explained the accident as well as he could remember it, stumbling here and there over his words as he described what happened.  He was blessedly numb.  

“heh.  and you’ve probably guessed.  me and papyrus.  we’re not from around here.  heh heh heh.  there’s no going back.  that’s ok.  it’s ok. we’re settled in.  bro’s happy.  he’s got friends now.  doesn’t matter.”

“…I guessed that much,” Grillby said.  Sans was having trouble focusing on him, but he was holding on to Sans like he thought he’d just get up and leave any second.  

That wasn’t a bad idea, but Sans thought it was more likely he’d just fall asleep where he was.  

“don’t mess that up.  can’t watch him try and fix something that can’t be fixed.  i really tried.  it didn’t matter.”  It was no matter.  'Cause there was  _no matter_  left of his dad, as far as he could tell. “heh.”  

“I won’t say anything.”  

Sans’ shoulders shook.  He couldn’t seem to stop laughing.  "he’s probably so pissed off right now.  oh well, right?"

Grillby stood up, abrupt.  Sans’ hand dropped onto the table.  Grillby walked around it and moved one of the other chairs closer to Sans’ seat.  He sat down again and pulled Sans into a hug.  

"i’m ok,” Sans said.  

“I know.”

Grillby gave the second best hugs of anyone, in Sans’ opinion.  And it never got dark when he was around.  Sans buried his face in Grillby’s shoulder.  Everything was fine.  He was fine.

The refrigerator hummed in the background.  Sans could hear Grillby’s gentle crackling.  Neither of them had much to say after that.  The kitchen stayed quiet until Grillby suggested they go to bed.  

 


	3. Chapter 3

It was unnaturally warm for so early in the morning.  The weather didn’t bother Sans. His own bedroom had been like an oven that morning, with Grillby snoring like an inferno in bed next to him.  

Sans had tried to roll him on his side like he’d been told was supposed to help, but Grillby was just fire all over the mattress.  Did he even have a side when he was like that?  Sans’ best bet was just turning the whole bed on its side, and he’d been fed up enough to try it.  

He’d climbed out of bed, used his magic to upend the whole thing, and just stared as his husband stubbornly stuck to it.  It seemed to make him snore louder, somehow.  

Sans propped the bed up like it was and left to grab breakfast at the local greasy spoon.

The heat didn’t get to him, but there was something else in the air that morning that settled in him and left him uneasy.  He wondered if it was just the lack of sleep messing with him, again, but when he listened in on other monsters’ conversations, he knew the mood wasn’t just in his head.  

He poured ketchup on his eggs as the other locals talked about the humans they’d seen hovering around the edge of town.  Probably just kids, curious, visiting from one of the human villages in short driving distance.

But not every human was happy about monsters taking over real estate.  And there were other humans who loved it, and were always looking for some EXP where they could get their fleshy hands on it.

There were a few humans living in town, and a couple of them had gone out to see if anyone was still skulking around.  The monsters were trying to go about their normal business while they waited for news.

“I’m starting to think your brother’s right, Sans.”  His waitress hovered over him, tapping a long, spindly finger against her writing pad.  Her yellow, glowing eyes radiated fear.  

“yeah,” Sans agreed.  He wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“Not enough puzzles.”  

“right.”  

Papyrus thought of them as an important tradition, but they really had been intended as security.  Sans didn’t like that people were so messed up they wanted to bring that stuff back as more than a novelty, but they had some good reason to be afraid.  Their town had to look like a juicy juice box of free EXP to a certain creepy type of human.

Sans wondered if his brother had heard the news yet.  He’d been up early, but Sans hoped he was still oblivious.  He’d want to meet the weirdos out there.

He left a good tip so Grillby wouldn’t hear about him being cheap later and do the thing he did when he was disappointed.  The silent, staring thing.  Well, he had a variety of those silent stares, sure, but there was one particular variation Sans liked to avoid.

He took a longer walk back to see if any of the monsters hanging around outside had any news.

“SANS!  DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS?”  Papyrus was right outside the grocery store. Angel was with him, leaning against his leg.  "IT IS VERY EXCITING!"

Sans cupped his hand by the side of his skull.  "didn’t quite catch that.”  

“THE GREAT PAPYRUS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO LOWER HIMSELF TO TELLING A GROWN SKELETON TO CLEAN OUT HIS EARS.”  

“my what.” Sans was laughing to himself.  His whole posture relaxed, now that he knew his brother was still in town.  He had really expected to find him playing guard at the limits.

Angel hung onto Papyrus’ leg, visibly oozing worry.  Kids had a talent for reading moods, so they must have picked up on something while Papyrus took them around.

“IT IS  _ALSO_  YOUR JOB TO BE A ROLE MODEL.  A POSITIVE MODEL!  NOT ONE FOR LAZINESS AND POOR HYGIENE.”  He frowned.  "…YOU HAVE ALREADY SUCCEEDED IN MODELING  _THAT_ BEHAVIOR, SANS.  CONGRATULATIONS?  AND NOW IT IS TIME TO AIM A LITTLE HIGHER!“  

"aw.  how’d you know i always wanted to be a model, bro?  never had the looks for it.”  

“NOW YOU ARE JUST AVOIDING THE TOPIC BY BEING RIDICULOUS!  YOU SHARE SOME MINOR SIMILARITIES IN APPEARANCE WITH THE STUNNINGLY PHOTOGENIC AND APPEALINGLY PREPOSSESSING PAPYRUS, THANKS TO OUR FAMILY TIES.  OF  _COURSE_  YOU COULD FULFILL THIS PRETEND AMBITION.”

“here i always thought i was too bony.”

“IMPOSSIBLE!”

Sans noticed that Angel was fussing a bit, like they thought they were being ignored. He knelt down next to them.  "hey, kid."  Angel gave him a high five.  Well, a high  _one_.  They only had a stubby finger-less appendage.

Sans stood back up, and the kid went back to hanging onto Papyrus’ leg.  

"OH, BUT FOR ONCE YOUR CONVENIENT TIMING IS NOT AN IRRITANT!”  Papyrus put his gloved hand on Sans’ shoulder.  "YOUR FAVORITE BROTHER NEEDS TO ASK A FAVOR OF YOU."

"how can i turn down my #1 bro,” Sans said, uneasy.  "can’t even see the rest of my brothers, you’re so far ahead of ‘em."

"WONDERFUL!”  He spoke quieter, but was still shouting.  "I AM LOOKING FOR SOME RESPONSIBLE PERSON TO WATCH OVER THEM WHILE I AM BUSY WITH… SOMETHING ELSE."

"and you looked around and there’s just me.”  

Irritation flashed across Papyrus’ face.  "IF I DID NOT TRUST YOU WITH CHILDREN, I WOULD  _NEVER_  ASK YOU TO TAKE CARE OF THEM.  IT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE OF ME.  INSULTING YOURSELF IS AN INSULT TO ME!"

"oops.  no, you’re the best.  you’re right.”

Papyrus pulled a #1 Mom mug out of his inventory.  "Angel" (Grillby) had gotten it for him the last Mother’s Day.  He gestured at the mug, emphatic. “I TAKE THIS VERY SERIOUSLY, SANS!”  

He must, since he carried it around with him 24/7.  Soozen had gotten him a t-shirt that said “This is what the world’s best mom looks like” with “mom” crossed out and “Papyrus” written in its place.  

“I MUST CONTINUE TO LIVE UP TO THIS GIFT!  SO, THAT IS WHY YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH THEM FOR A FEW HOURS FOR ME,” Papyrus explained.  He carefully put the mug back into his inventory.  Angel was looking up at Papyrus.

“sorry.  busy.” Sans shrugged.  It was a good speech, but Sans knew Papyrus was gearing up to go look for humans.  

“SANS!  THAT IS A BALD-FACED LIE!”

Sans rubbed at his face.  It was true.  His face was tragically hairless.  Did he have a fake mustache on him?  He checked his prank storage inventory, and was relieved to find several there, in different colors.  He slapped one on his face before Papyrus could notice, and repeated the line. “still busy,” he said.

Papyrus closed his eye sockets.  

“no, seriously. i played a prank on grillbz and he might be getting up soon.”

“…I AM SURE ANGEL WOULD ENJOY WATCHING THAT,” Papyrus said, slowly.  "THEY BOTH HAVE A HIGH TOLERANCE FOR YOUR LOW-BROW JAPERY."

Sans moved the mustache to right on top of his eye sockets.

"SANS!  THIS IS IMPORTANT.  PLEASE?  I HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO THE PEOPLE OF THIS TOWN!  AND TO THE WORLD!”  

“i mean, sure, the kid can watch the show.”  Angel lit up and Papyrus started to thank him, but Sans kept talking.  "then grillbz can’t yell at me.  everyone gets something outta this."

"I REFUSE TO ALLOW YOU TO USE A CHILD AS A WAY TO GET OUT OF BEING REPRIMANDED,” Papyrus said.  "THEY ARE NOT A SHIELD.  OR EVEN PARTICULARLY SHIELD-SHAPED."  He looked Angel over, to make sure.

"k.  never mind, then.  see you later,” Sans said.  He started to turn.

“WAIT!  SANS! THIS IS SERIOUS!”  

“ok sure.  but you didn’t even say what you needed to do so bad.  i’d love to help you out, bro, but i got my own stuff to do.”  

“YOU KNOW VERY WELL WHAT I AM PLANNING ON DOING,” Papyrus said.  

“sure.” He shrugged.  "but lay it out for me.  it’s being dealt with, right?  that’s not your job."

"OF COURSE IT IS!  NAVIGATING THE COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN OUR SPECIES IS ONE OF MY HIGHEST PRIORITIES.”  

Sans had him backed into a corner, now.  They both knew what his highest priority was, and it was dripping slime down his leg and staring up at him, not entirely sure what was going on.

“someone else is already dealing with it,” Sans pointed out again.  He really wanted Papyrus to let someone else deal with something, for once.  "and you know the older kid’s not taking it well if she thinks you went off to…"  Sans looked away, for a second.  Potentially put himself in danger?  He couldn’t say that.  "make some new human friends.”  

“WHY WOULD SHE–” he broke off.  "I WILL BE COMPLETELY FINE, SANS!"

"i know that, sure.”

“THEN YOU CAN EXPLAIN IT TO HER.”

“ok.”

“BECAUSE IT IS  _IMPORTANT_.  HOW CAN ANYONE GUARANTEE A SAFE FUTURE FOR ANYONE’S CHILDREN, IF WE DO NOT DEAL WITH THESE POSSIBLE CONFLICTS HEAD ON?”  He was channeling Undyne, Sans noticed.  He wished she lived out here so she could take charge.  

“right.”  He had been planning on keeping the conversation light.  He’d messed that one up.  "anyway i’m on a schedule here, sorry."  He started backing away.  Talking him out of it had failed, so he’d just avoid the issue.  "bye, kiddo.  keep mom outta trouble, all right?”  

“SANS!  DO YOU THINK GRILLBY WILL OPEN LATE AND WATCH THEM, IF I ASK NICELY?”  

Usually?  Yes. “today?  nope.  but give it a shot, sure.”  He waved.

“SANS–”

Sans didn’t hear the rest of what he said.  He took a shortcut.

Grillby was in the kitchen, scrambling eggs with his magic.  He was still in his pajamas and he looked pretty miffed, as far as Sans could tell.

“'mornin,” Sans said.  "you’re lookin, uh, bright eyed and…"

Grillby turned to stare at him.  Sans could only tell that because his glasses were pointed in his direction.

"bright everything else,” Sans finished.  

He set down his spatula and wrapped his hands around the top of his head, so it looked like he had a little ponytail.  Sans thought of that part of him as his  _head_  and not  _hair_ , so he had an odd, confused moment before he got what was going on.  

“bright eyed and bushy tailed.  heh.  thanks.  i can always depend on you to help me out, grillbz.”

Grillby let go of his head and picked up his spatula again.

“rough morning?”

Grillby pointed the spatula at him and shook his head.  

“man, i can’t believe i missed that.”  It would have brightened up his whole morning, seeing Grillby fall out of bed.   _Probably_ fall out of bed.  He wasn’t sure what would happen, and that’s what made seeing it so exciting. “what’re you making me?" 

Grillby pointed to one of the kitchen chairs, and Sans obligingly went to sit.  

There were footsteps outside.  Someone was running.  The door flung open.

"SANS!”  

Wow, Papyrus had made great time.  Especially since he had Angel cradled in one arm.  They looked delighted.  Slimes weren’t particularly fast, so anything over a walking pace was exciting for the kids.  

“hey,” Sans said.  

“OH!  GOOD MORNING, GRILLBY!  I AM DEEPLY SYMPATHETIC TO WHATEVER SUFFERING MY BROTHER INFLICTED ON YOU THAT HE MISNAMED A 'PRANK.’”  

“…he put the mattress on its side,” Grillby said.

“you were snoring,” Sans said.  "you’re supposed to roll people on their sides when they do that.  i read that somewhere."

"I do not snore.”

“HOW DID HE NOT WAKE UP WHILE YOU WERE DOING THAT?”  Papyrus asked, briefly distracted.

“couldn’t hear me over all that snoring.”

Grillby took the ketchup off the kitchen table and put it back in the fridge before giving Sans his eggs.  Sans had to get the ketchup himself.  

Papyrus set Angel down on the floor, and they slid over to Grillby and waved their arm, asking to be picked up again.  

“OH!  GRILLBY!  DO YOU HAVE TO OPEN VERY SOON?  I NEED SOMEONE TO WATCH THEM AND SANS IS…BEING SANS.”

“uh.”  

Grillby was staring at Sans, confused.  "…I don’t mind, but…"

"bro wants to check out some humans he heard were hanging around.”  

“New neighbors?”

“nope.  weirdos, maybe.  outside town.”

Grillby got a fork out and gave Angel some of his eggs.  He took his time absorbing what Sans said.  "…I can watch them," he said, finally.  

"THANK YOU!  I WILL TEACH YOU ONE OF MY FAVORITE RECIPES IN EXCHANGE!”

“…no, it’s fine.”

He insisted until Grillby accepted the exchange.   Papyrus ran to his room to put on the clothes he wore for work and then raced out the door.

Grillby set Angel on the floor.  "…he was going to go.  He would just ask a neighbor."

"i just wanted to put it off a while,” Sans said.  Make Papyrus run around looking for a babysitter until everything resolved itself naturally.

He nodded.  "Sorry.  They didn’t let the other kids out of school?“

"no one knows what’s up.  it’s probably no big deal.”

“Ok.  Are you going to go keep an eye on him?”

Sans’ shoulders slumped.  "yeah.“

”………be careful.“

"yeah.”

-

No one found the humans.  Papyrus was annoyed when Sans showed up, interfering with his official business, but he didn’t shoo Sans away.  

It was a minor scare, but the town decided to go ahead and set up some puzzles where humans might sneak in.  Papyrus took charge of that.  Alphys came up with a few complicated puzzle designs to help, and Papyrus made a number of his own.  A few other monsters built an escape route.  Just in case.  Even after the fear of that day passed by, there would be something on the news that would stir it up again, to motivate them.

It felt like there was a long cord of thin wire wrapping itself around Sans’ ribs, after that.  Maybe from before that day, when he saw his dad by his telescope.  Maybe from years before, when a human came out of the ruins.  Maybe that feeling had always been there, and every now and then Sans noticed it like it was new.  

It got a little bit tighter, every day.  The increase in pressure came on so slow he got used to it.  It was just how it was.  

He ignored it.


	4. Chapter 4

In the middle of a warm sunny day and surrounded by people, Sans felt a shock.  It was like ice water was dumped down the back of his spine.  

He stopped walking and slowly turned around, 180°.  There was a shape behind him.  It was a face, like a mask, with two asymmetrical eye sockets staring right into his.  The figure had a white outline that filled up with bright light that made the inside of Sans’ skull loud with static.

Sans slowly lifted his hand.  He had a headache already.  "hey.“

He thought he saw shapes, words, shaking in the air.  Sounds, too, almost like a voice.

"sorry, pops,” Sans heard himself say.  "didn’t get a word of that."

The voice cut off.  Sans blinked rapidly, trying to clear the afterimages from his vision.  Dad was gone.

The person Sans was walking with asked him if he had stopped for a phone call.  

"nah.  you didn’t see the weirdo following us?  heh.”  

No one else would see him.  Sans knew that.  Dad was shattered across time and space.  There were a couple bigger pieces hanging around.  He wasn’t so much stopping for a visit as he was just a little bit always there.

Well, there was no fixing it.  

That night he uncovered his homemade telescope and fussed with it for a little while.  He’d tossed a tarp over it after his last visit from his dad, intending to leave it outside until it rotted.  The months hadn’t been kind to it, but it hadn’t gone completely back to its natural garbage state quite yet.

“hey, pops,” Sans said.  "you there?“  

Everything stayed quiet.  

"oh well.   look, you trying to tell me something?  you’ve been showing up a lot lately.  now’s your chance.  you show up  _right_  now, i’m all ears.  heh.”  He finished setting up and peered through the eye piece.  "lay it on me."

No visions, no sound.  Whatever triggered the visits wasn’t happening.  Sans hung around and found all the planets that were visible.  If anyone asked what he’d been up do, he’d tell them he was "checking out uranus” and they’d probably leave it alone.  

The night stayed quiet.

 

–

 

_Something felt off-kilter.  The smell of dust in the lab was thick, overpowering.  Sans was looking at blueprints, and was sure he had never been doing anything else._

_He couldn’t make out specific words or lines on the paper anymore, but they seemed to have meaning, anyway.  They shifted and he was struck by a realization.  The answer had been staring him in the face.  He could fix everything, now._

_Sans knew he needed to call Alphys so she could bring over materials and confirm he was correct.  He reached for his phone._

He woke and, not entirely aware yet, he fumbled for his real phone and brought up Alphys’ number.  

Sans rubbed his head and groaned.  What a stupid dream.  At least a real nightmare made a cool story.  

Before he set the phone back on the nightstand, he took another look at the picture he had set for Alphys’ contact info.  She was in one of her cosplay wigs.  Undyne had her arm over her shoulders, and Alphys looked happy.  

The details of the dream were slipping away, but that didn’t matter.  When he’d had that one before and tried to hold onto them, his burst of inspiration always turned out to be something like rubbing the broken machine with vinegar or sticking a car engine into it and having Papyrus drive it.  His idea was always something random related to what he’d been doing that day.

Sans wished his own head would quit jerking him around.

Grillby made a confused crackling sound and pushed at the hand Sans was still holding the phone in.  His meaning was clear enough.  He should put it down and go back to sleep.

“snack time.  want me to grab something for you?”

Grillby dropped his head back down.  

“more for me.”

Sans carried his phone into the living room.  Soozen was on the couch, an entire box of cookies (box included) halfway in her mouth.

“hey, kiddo,” Sans said.  He noticed she had an unopened bag of chips next to her, too.  Maybe Papyrus was right when he said there was a major growth spurt on the horizon.  "let me have some chips and what’s happening here is between you and me." 

She nodded.  The pact was sealed.  

He carried his phone and a handful of chips into the kitchen and settled in at the table.  It was a little after four in the morning.

"heeeeey, alphys, my best buddy.”  

“S-sans? What the hell are you –  _wait_.  is-is someone  _sick_?   _Dead_??”  Her voice went up in pitch the longer she talked.

“nah.”

“W-well, good!  I was about to say ‘someone better be dead’ and then I thought 'what if they actually  _are_ , Alphys, oh my god?’”  

“you up?”

“No!  Well, now I am!!  I guess!”  He heard her sigh.  "I didn’t want to wake up Undyne answering my phone in the middle of the night, like a jerk."

Yeah, this was a bad idea.  Still, Sans felt himself relaxing, hearing her voice.  She’d really tried to help him back in the day.  

He hadn’t been the best friend to her.  He wanted to excuse himself because he’d been dealing with a lot at the same time she was, but that was probably just a cheap excuse for being lazy.  

"geez, it’s later than i thought.  sorry, buddy.”  

“Uhoh.  I know what this is!”

“uh.  what is it.”

“It’s been years since we had a, you know,  _club meeting_.”  

“oh right.”  

“W-well then, get over here.  I, uh, have a couple movies we could watch and I can grab some snacks!  I mean, if you want.”

It was their club for monsters with shit sleeping schedules.  It met only in the middle of the night and they were the only members. Alphys was the founder and she had given Sans the title “first officer.”  He hadn’t wanted it.

Sans didn’t reply right away, so the next thing Alphys said had a nervous edge to it.

“…that’s not why you c-called, is it?  God, sorry, just please tell me what it is so I can climb out the bottom of this trash can, okay?”  

“nah. that was it.”  He’d just wanted to hear her say something, but getting out of the house sounded like a good idea.  "i’ll be there–" he took a short cut ”–two seconds ago."  He spoke directly behind her.

She jumped and electricity bolted out of the end of her phone.  She was still holding it to her ear, so the lightning singed the floor.  

A panel in the wall opened up and a small robot rolled up to the spot and hit it with a fire extinguisher.  

"Sans!  Just for that, we’re watching the movie I know you’ll hate.”

“i’ll watch anything,” Sans said.

She patted the little robot on the head.  "Even if you don’t like it, you should at least appreciate it.  The animation is top tier even if the fanservice  _almost_  crosses the line into exploitation.  Uh.  It’s sci fi!"

They went downstairs into her work room.  Robot parts were scattered around and plans were tacked up on the wall next to pictures of anime characters Alphys found inspirational.  There was an old, worn couch in the back of the room for her to pass out on if she’d worked too long without taking a break, and a very expensive looking television in front of that.  Sans would’ve gone for the nice couch and the crap TV if he’d been the one making the choice, but everyone had their own priorities.  

"This really takes me back!”  Alphys said, as she set up the television.  "Feeling like garbage in some dirty basement in the middle of the night!"

"yeah. i’m getting all, uh, nostalgic.”  

“Right??  Except, in the bad way?  Like, thank god I’m not back then!  Nostalgic for right now?  No, ignore me.  That doesn’t make  _any_ sense.”

“i dunno.”  Sans yawned and stretched out.  He needed to send a message to Grillby, but he didn’t want to wake him up again.  "feels like we’re all still back down there sometimes, anyway."  Time travel was a rip off, Sans decided.  All you had to do to stay in the past was have a lot of messed up stuff happen so you always felt like part of you was back there when it happened.  All that scientific research and there’d turned out to be a much lazier way to go back that didn’t risk destroying reality.

"God!  You’re in a bad mood.”  She sat down next to him.  "But, yeah.  I wake up in the middle of the night and come down here, and when I open the door I feel like I’m going to step right into my old lab and all the stuff I did to make that…not right, really, but better – it’s going to just be gone.“

"that sucks.”  He patted her arm.  

“Yeah, I know!”   She turned on the movie.  

There was an edge to the conversation.  There was always that chance that it could literally happen – they could wake up back then, and everything good they’d had since then would be gone.  Yeah.  That sucked.  

He was really tired.

Sans watched an anime character with carefully but unbelievably animated breasts swoop around in the movie intro.  "wow."  Well, this was  _distracting_.  

Alphys started to explain the plot, since it was a movie based on an anime Sans hadn’t seen.  Sans started to fall asleep.

He heard footsteps tromping down the stairs, and opened one eye socket to see if it was Undyne or one of the kids.  

"Hey!”  Undyne stage whispered.  "When did this loser get here?“

Alphys paused the show.  

"uh,” Sans said.  "you can see i’m awake, pal."

"Oh!  Sorry!  So, when’d you get here, loser?”  She laughed and came over to smack him affectionately on the shoulder, but he decided to sit on the other side of the couch.

“Uh, we decided to watch a movie,” Alphys said.  "Kind of a weird time for it, but…um…"

"nah.  i think you’ve gotta watch a show like this when no one else is awake.”

“Time is a meaningless social construct anyway, am I right?  Eheheheh…”

“Well, shove over and let me watch, too!  I love this one!”  

Now that Undyne was there, she and Alphys started to discuss the intricacies of the plot.  Sans’ skull fell back and he let their impassioned discussion of something he didn’t care about act as white noise to nod off to.  

“So, what’s his deal?”  Undyne asked.  Sans was still awake, but he guessed he looked like he was out.

“Ummm…like a bad dream, maybe,” Alphys said.  

“still awake,” Sans said, before the conversation got embarrassing.  “maybe i just missed the sound of alphys’ voice.  you think of that?”

“Ha, right!”  Undyne reached over Alphys and gripped his shoulder. “Just cop to it!  No one cares!  We’re not going to think you’re any more of a wimp because you had a nightmare.  I have them all the time, and I can kick anyone’s butt!”

“It’s true!  It’s completely normal,” Alphys said.  "The kids get them pretty bad."

"We woke up just a couple nights ago because Striker was wailing her friggin heads off.  I couldn’t even get it out of her what she’d been dreaming about.”

“man, you two are really giving me a revelation here.  people have bad dreams.  wow, thanks.”  

“Hey, Sans?  Don’t be a jerk!” Alphys said.

“yeah, sorry.  you’re helping me out.”  And neither of them had even mentioned that they probably had to get up early and haul some kids to school.

“And don’t forget it!”  Undyne’s hand was digging in so hard he was starting to worry about HP loss.  "Because we’ll do it any time, no problem."  She was smiling.

Jeez, he really  _must_  look like he was messed up.  "thanks.”

She sighed and let go of him.  He rotated his shoulder.  It still worked, some how.  "You know – this movie’s great, but there’s something that really distracts me when I need it!“  

"ok?”

“Robot tag!”  Undyne jumped up and grabbed a loose robot arm off the floor.  It looked a little like an extra one of Mettaton’s.  

“Maybe we should just watch the show?”  Alphys said.  

Undyne came after her with the robot arm.  

“W-wait! Let me get a hiding space, or a head start – or something!” Alphys scrambled off the couch.  

“you’d better get armed, alphs,” Sans said.  

“You aren’t getting out of this, either!” Undyne said.  "Arm YOURSELF!"

"k.”  He got off the couch and picked up the closest robot leg.  

Sans spent half an hour leaning against the edge of the couch holding a robot leg while Alphys and Undyne chased each other around their basement.  It did give him something to look at when the women in Alphys’ movie started to get weird.  

Undyne suddenly charged at him and he dodged out of the way to the other side of the couch.  Alphys popped right up from where she’d been hiding behind it and booped him in the back of the skull with a robot hand.  

Alphys laughed, delighted at herself.  "You’re so predictable!"

"And, you’re SO  _IT_!”  Undyne added.  "Teaming up is the key to victory!"  She ran over and gave Alphys’ robot hand a high five with her robot arm.  

That was a  _little_  annoying.  "k,” Sans said.  

“N-nothing can defeat the p-power of…of…love!  And friendship!” Alphys exclaimed.  They were both so excited about tagging him.  

“k.”  He decided to get Alphys back, since she was the one who actually got him.  He looked at her.

“Jeez…uh…maybe…tone down your creep eye?”  Alphys said.  "And, um—no tag backs!"

Sans was sure that wasn’t true, since Alphys and Undyne had been chasing each other and mostly ignoring him until then, but ok.  He turned his glowy blue eye that was totally cool and not at all creepy onto Undyne.

"I’d like to see you TRY, punk!”

“ok.”

When Grillby asked him how his late night hang-out with Alphys had gone, Sans shrugged and said “it was mostly just weird.”  The game had ended for Sans when a stampede of children came down the stairs at six in the morning and joined in.  He’d given up his leg to some tyke way more excited about physical activity than he was, and gone home.  

He finished watching the movie at home.  He hated it, sure, but he still needed to know the ending.  Alphys gloated when he told her that, and said there was a sequel if he needed to stop by again.  

He had the best friends in the world.  


	5. Chapter 5

Sans was half dozing on the living room couch.  Soozen and Angel were bickering in their partially understandable way.  

“It’s mine!”  

“burble burbububle!”  

Sans wasn’t positive, but he thought he could safely translate Angel’s comment to “No!  Mine!”  

There was a loud splat.  

“what’d paps say if he heard there was hitting?”  Sans asked, not opening his eyes or moving.  Papyrus was playing outside town, resetting the puzzles he’d set up out there, and Sans had been left in charge.  

“You’re awake?”  Soozen sounded much too cheerful all of a sudden.

Sans felt something slimy touch his ankle.  He opened one eye.  Angel was looking at him.  Their expression seemed to read: “Play with me?”

They slid away and came back with a handful of playing cards.

“Ugh, that’s boring.”  Soozen melted into a bored puddle.  

“do my a favor, kid, and play nice with your sister.”  He yawned and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and curled up under it.

“C'mon!”  Soozen started to play a song on her music player.  Sans didn’t recognize the tune, but it was much too energetic.  "Rise and shine!“  

Angel climbed up onto the couch and slid up to where Sans’ head lump was hidden under the blanket.  They dropped a card on him.  

"c'mon, kiddo.”  

The song Soozen was playing stopped, abrupt.  After a minute, a new one started.

_And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon_

_Little boy blue and the man on the moon_

_When you comin’ home, dad_ (Soozen yelled “Sans” to cover up the dad line)

_I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then_

_You know we’ll have a good time then_

“this is the saddest nap of my life,” Sans said.  Mostly because it wasn’t happening.  "quit it with the life soundtrack.  it’s not cool how you’re almost stealing my best joke."

She switched to a song from a kids’ album.  The song was just called "No!”  

“can’t argue with that,” Sans muttered.  "gimme a sec.“  

Two minutes later, they caught on that the "sec” was a lie, and Soozen climbed onto his blanket, too.

“Saaaaaaaans.”

“blurpleblurp.”

“c'mon kids.  quit waiting around, wasting time.  let’s play something.  uncle sans is getting bored, here.”

They let him sit up.

“if i fall asleep at dinner, i’m blaming you kids,” he grumbled.  

Angel’s look seemed to say that he usually did that anyway.

“quit it with the slander.”  Sans picked up a few cards that had been scattered near him, and the kids picked up the rest of them.  He started to shuffle.  

Sans was just about ready to scam two small children out of their allowances when his phone started playing the melody for a popular song his bro loved.  It was by some Astley guy.  

He set down his cards, wondering if Papyrus needed a lunch drop off or something.  Usually he was too busy with his puzzles when he was out there to just call to chat.

Angel burbled and Sans recognized the sound they always used for Papyrus.  They knew Sans’ ring tones.  

“hey, bro, what’s shaking your bones?” Sans asked.  

“FIRST.”  Sans recognized something off in his brother’s voice.  "I AM COMPLETELY FINE."

Sans’ grip tightened on his phone.  "good to hear.”  

“MORE THAN FINE, REALLY!  TODAY WILL SOON BE COUNTED AMONGST THE MANY AWE INSPIRINGLY SUCCESSFUL DAYS LIVED BY THE GREAT PAPYRUS.  YOU WILL WANT TO REMEMBER TODAY CLEARLY, TO MARK IT DOWN IN YOUR MEMOIRS.”

“ok.  i’m ready to have my socks knocked off.”  

“YOU COULD EVEN CALL IT A…BONE-FIED VICTORY!  NYEH HEH HEH HEH!” Papyrus’ voice  _did_  sound off, and he was sure avoiding the subject.  After he laughed, Sans could hear heavy, pained breathing on the other end of the line.  

“thanks.  i’ll save that one for the memoir.”  About being the brother of the Great Papyrus, Sans guessed.  "always glad to get a call outta nowhere about how great you’re doing," he continued, uneasy.  

"WELL…THIS WILL SOUND STRANGE FROM YOUR GREAT BROTHER, BUT…I AM FINE!  MORE THAN FINE!  BUT NOT… _GREAT_.  I MEAN, OF COURSE I AM GREAT, BUT MY SITUATION COULD BE CONSIDERED SUB PAR AT THE MOMENT.”

“ok. what’s up?”  Sans kept his voice light.  He felt sick.

“THERE WAS A…FRIENDLY CONFRONTATION OUTSIDE TOWN.  I WAS, OF COURSE, THE VICTOR.  BUT…LET ME SEE.  HOW CAN I PUT THIS SO THAT YOU DO NOT TAKE A…SHORT CUT TO THE WRONG CONCLUSION, I WONDER?”  

“you’re where, now?  still outside down?”  Sans should have known better.  Of course something would end up happening out there.  

The kids were watching him.  

“OH, I KNOW!  IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE, CORRECT?  THAT IS WHAT I AM DOING.  PROVING HOW RESPONSIBLE A SKELETON CAN BE!”  

“where, though?  i’m sure you’re doing great.  uh.  kinda want to see a good example of…whatever you’re talking about.”  

“SPEAKING OF RESPONSIBILITY, SANS, IF I TELL YOU WHERE I AM, DO YOU PROMISE TO FIND SOMEONE TO WATCH THE CHILDREN BEFORE YOU VISIT ME?  THINK OF IT AS A PRELIMINARY TEST YOU MUST PASS BEFORE YOU ALLOWED TO BE AWED BY MY OWN RESPONSIBLE EXAMPLE.”  

“a promise?  uh.”  This was easy, for a change.  "sure, just for you.“  He’d just ask a neighbor or drop ‘em with Alphys or off at Grillby’s bar.  

"ALL RIGHT!  I TRUST YOU COMPLETELY, THEN.”  

“so.  where?”  

“I DECIDED TO BE RESPONSIBLE BY CHECKING IN WITH THE DOCTOR.”

“got it.”  

“THEY EXPRESSED A WISH TO KEEP AN EYE ON ME FOR A LITTLE WHILE.  IT IS UNNECESSARY BUT THEY ARE  _ALSO_ RESPONSIBLE AND ARE SHOWING THAT BY BEING A LITTLE TOO CAUTIOUS.”  

“sure.  they just had to bump your hp back up, right?”

“WELL…THEY DID THAT, YES.  MAYBE THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE EASIER TO EXPLAIN IN PERSON.  SKELETON TO SKELETON.”  

Sans wanted to get down there, so they ended the conversation.  Sans put away his phone and stared into space for a second.  

“He’s at the doctor?”  Soozen asked.  He could hear how nervous she was.  Papyrus had a loud enough voice that the kids must have heard both sides of the conversation.  

“yeah.  sounds to me like he cracked a bone or something and they just need to keep an eye on it to make sure it healed right,” Sans said.  “happens every day.”  

“Can we go, too?”  

“nah.  but i’ll call and you can talk once i’m there.”  

“Why not?”  She looked at Angel.  " _I’m_  not a baby."

Sans shrugged.  "later.”  Once he was sure it wasn’t  _really_  bad.  He stood up and the cards he’d been hiding in his lap fell onto the floor.  He didn’t register it.  

He called a neighbor and luckily someone was around and willing to stop by so Sans didn’t have to put too much effort into figuring out what to do with them.  

“Why can’t I go?”  Soozen asked again, grabbing onto Sans’ leg.  

“uh.”  He rubbed his head.  "it’ll make him pretty happy knowing how much you wanted to visit."

Her stubborn grip on his leg reminded him that he hadn’t answered her question.  

"it could be gross to look at.  no point making you sick for nothing, right?  or maybe doc won’t let anyone in 'cause there’s an infection risk.  we’d be sitting bored in a waiting room for hours.  it’s something like that.  ok, kid?”  

She nodded, slow, and released his leg.  "We’ll go later."

"right.  maybe grillbz can take you.”

“Ok.”  Soozen looked wobbly.  She didn’t have a lot of great memories of doctors, he figured.  She’d know just as well as he did that people didn’t always come home when they went to visit them.

But Papyrus was awake and talking.  Sans took a shortcut.

–

Papyrus sat in a small hospital cot, his features contorted more in irritation than anything worse.

“SANS!  OF COURSE YOU FULFILLED YOUR PROMISE?”  

“yeah.  neighbor came by.”  

“THANK YOU.”  He had said “of course” but the relief on his face made Sans think he hadn’t entirely trusted him.  

“doc said you’ve got a, uh, 'hp issue.’”  He made air quotes.

Sans gave his brother a very careful once over.  Papyrus was four points shy of his current max.  

“THAT HUMAN HAD A VERY STRANGE WEAPON.”

As Sans watched, Papyrus’ HP ticked down two more points.

“IT DOES THAT EVERY MINUTE, AND IT IS BEGINNING TO GET ON MY NERVES!”

Sounded like a status ailment.  Those usually lasted a few turns or a number of seconds.  Sometimes they lasted an hour.  "how long since you got hit with it?“ 

"I DO NOT SEE THE POINT IN IT LASTING SO LONG,” Papyrus said, annoyed again.  "IT HAS BEEN AN HOUR AND A HALF."

Some of them lasted a day.  It could get bad for a monster that couldn’t easily heal itself, or if it was incapacitated in some other way.  "no idea, either,” Sans said.  

“AND I DON’T SEE WHY I AM EXPECTED TO STAY HERE.  THIS DAMAGE IS NEXT TO NOTHING TO A MONSTER AS ROBUST AS THE UNDEFEATABLE PAPYRUS.  ALL STAYING HERE IS ACCOMPLISHING IS MAKING YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE NEEDLESSLY AGONIZE OVER MY ALMOST ENTIRELY PERFECT HEALTH!”  

“like you said, though.  hanging around’s the responsible thing.”  

“THAT IS WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID, YES.”  He crossed his arms, pouting.  

“well, bro, what'dya tell me when i get sick?”  

“I AM ALREADY ENTIRELY AWARE OF WHAT I SAY TO YOU!”  Papyrus always told him to listen to the doctor, and now it was biting him in the coccyx.  

Sans snickered.  "looks like you’re getting a taste of your own–"

"MY OWN MEDICINE!  YES!  I DO NOT NEED TO HEAR THIS!”  

-

Sans watched Papyrus’ hp tick down again.  He should probably stop monitoring it since it made him sick every time it dropped, but he could barely make himself blink.  

Sans asked the question he had been putting off:  "so.  this friendly fight.  someone in town?"

"OH, NO!  I HAD NEVER MET THEM BEFORE.  I WAS RE-SEQUENCING THE OUTERMOST PUZZLE AND A HUMAN SURPRISED ME.  I WON HANDILY, OF COURSE.  I WONDER IF THEY REALIZE THAT THEY ARE USING SUCH A STRANGE WEAPON?”

“maybe not,” Sans said.  "they said something dumb but kinda cool like ‘let’s spar,’ right?"  Papyrus had said it was friendly.

"THEY BARELY SAID ANYTHING, ACTUALLY.  I BELIEVE THEY WERE NOT EXPECTING ME TO BE AS STRONG AS I OBVIOUSLY AM.  I MAY HAVE EMBARRASSED THEM BY OUTCLASSING THEM SO SEVERELY.”  

“right.”

“OR MAYBE…DO YOU THINK THEY DISLIKED MY PUZZLES, BROTHER?  I SHOULD PUT A SUGGESTION BOX OUTSIDE TOWN IN CASE HUMANS WANT TO EXPRESS THEIR PREFERENCES.  IT MAY HELP IF THERE IS A LESS VIOLENT OPTION.”

“good idea.”

The nurse came in and leaned over Papyrus a minute, healing his HP.  

Sans asked him if the doctor had gotten in touch with someone who knew more about fighting injuries.  Sans liked the doc and owed a lot to 'em, but they weren’t going to be used to dealing with this kind of problem.  Monsters fought, but this sounded like it had turned malicious.  

He was told that the doctor was contacting plenty of people, and that he should sit down and let them do their job.

Sitting sounded like an ok idea, actually.  Sans sat on the edge of Papyrus’ bed.  

“so you’ve got no idea who it was?”  He was still trying to get information out of his brother, but the question was also partially aimed at the nurse.  

The nurse answered.  "We sent some humans out to look, but I guess whoever it was, they just woke up and left.“  

"I HOPE THEY ENJOYED THE SNACK I GAVE THEM!”  Papyrus brightened up.  He must not have heard about them sending people to look for the human.

“hope you left 'em a nice big dog bone,” Sans said.  He hoped they choked on it a little, with nothing to wash it down.

“THEY WERE AT 1 HP,” Papyrus said.  "I LEFT THEM TWO."

"nice.”

Papyrus called home when Sans told him that Soozen had asked to come along.  Sans watched Papyrus’ health drop ten points while he talked to the kids.  Now that he was paying such close attention, he also noticed that talking to Soozen made Papyrus’ base HP  _jump_  twenty.  Cute.  Sans had never noticed that happening before.

He sent Grillby a quick message.  

_bro’s sick but fine.  at doc’s now_

“so, uh.”  

“YES, BROTHER?”

“does it feel weird?”  Did it hurt?

He clenched a fist.  "IT IS OF COURSE NOTHING I CANNOT HANDLE!"

It had to hurt.  "yeah.  no one needs to tell you to  _show your_ _spine_.”  

“YOU ARE EITHER SAYING THAT I AM VERY BRAVE OR THAT I NEED TO CLOSE THE BACK OF MY GOWN,” Papyrus said.  

“i mean, maybe both.  i’m not checking that for you.”  

Sans’ phone buzzed.  Grillby must have had his phone on him.

_I will be there in a minute._

Sans tapped out a quick reply.

_you know how flattered i get when you skip work for me but everyone’s ok_

Maybe Grillby didn’t think there was anyone watching the kids.  He sent a few messages clarifying, but Grillby was insistent.  Well, that was why he’d wanted to move to a small town.  He could put a sign on the door and skip out for an hour and everyone was nosy enough to know it was just to check up on his sick in-law.

“hope you want company,” Sans said.

“PLEASE!  EVERYONE CAN VISIT!  I AM JUST WAITING HERE WHILE THEY HEAL ME AND THEN TRY OUT MORE KINDS OF ANTIDOTES, WHEN THERE ARE A MILLION OTHER THINGS I COULD BE DOING.”

“antidotes more like anti- _don'ts_.” Sans snickered.  "since they don’t work.  heh."

"AND THE MORE PEOPLE VISIT, THE MORE YOUR INCESSANT NONSENSE WILL BE DROWNED OUT!”  He was smiling.

“hey. that one was good, though.”  

“THEN WHAT IS THIS…ANTI- _PATHY_  I AM FEELING?  IT MUST BE FROM THE POISON!”

“nice.  once they find the antidote, think about what a great  _anecdote_ you’ll get out of this.”

Papyrus nodded.  He took Sans’ suggestion seriously.  "TRUE!  I MUST ALWAYS ENDEAVOR TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, NO MATTER HOW UNPLEASANT, OBNOXIOUS, OR PAINFUL!"

"uh. you’re talking about my jokes, there, right, and not…”  Sans rubbed the back of his head.  "aw, jeez.  you’re really not feeling great, huh."

"THAT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED,” Papyrus said.  He crossed his arms over his chest.  "I AM FINE!“

"but not great.  got it.  ok.”  Sans sighed.  "all right." He shifted down the bed.  "give your big bro a hug.  won’t make you feel better, but…”  He shrugged.

“I CAN THINK OF NOTHING RIGHT NOW THAT WOULD MAKE ME FEEL BETTER.”  

“other than, like, a cure.”

“WELL, YES.”  

But they didn’t have one of those, so Sans gave him a hug.  He didn’t know if it helped Papyrus, but he felt a little better.  

Sans settled back in and listened to Papyrus’ special blend of optimism and bitter complaining.  He did his best to stay out of the nurse’s way as he walked in and out of the room.  

After a while, they heard a little girl’s voice outside the door.  

“you’re about to get swarmed,” Sans said.  

“DID GRILLBY BRING THEM?”  Papyrus asked.  He sat up straight, and pushed his shoulders back.  "SANS, I DO NOT WANT THEM TO WORRY.  AM I GIVING OFF MY USUAL 'COOL MOM’ AURA?"

Sans looked him over.  "you’ve got something on your gown.”  He pointed and when Papyrus looked down, Sans flicked him in the forehead.  "heh.  now you look extra cool."

Papyrus whapped his hand away, irritated.  His expression cleared as soon as the door opened and the children came in.  

Grillby stood behind them, towering over the two tiny blue slimes.  Sans had trouble reading his expression.  He was still in his work clothes, and the room suddenly smelled strongly of overly cooked barbecue.  

"CHILDREN, YOUR TIMING IS PERFECT,” Papyrus said.  "SANS HAS BEEN HERE FOR AN HOUR, SO HE HAS ALREADY RUN THROUGH EVERY SINGLE JOKE HE KNOWS."

"man, i barely got started.”

“YOU SAVED ME,” Papyrus said.  "YOU HAVE MY MOST SINCERE THANK YOU."  

Grillby stepped back out.  Sans figured he wanted to get a complete update from the doctor, without the kids there.  He hadn’t exactly filled Grillby in on all the details in his text messages.  

Angel made some bubbling noises.  Soozen slid over to the edge of the bed.  When she stopped, he noticed she was shuddering, like she was filled with a nervous energy.  Not a fan of hospitals, Sans figured.  

Angel tried to climb up onto the bed.  Their stubby arms couldn’t reach the edge.  Their effort distracted Soozen from her discomfort, and she tried to lift them up.  

"Sans! Help!”  She gave up and head-butted Sans in the leg.  

Sans shrugged and used his magic to lift Angel up onto the bed.  Soozen was capable of climbing up herself, but complained until Sans lifted her up, too.  He gave her a trip to the ceiling before setting her down.

Angel sloshed up towards Papyrus’ face and immediately gave him a slimy, sloppy kiss on the cheek.  They made their burbling noise that Sans knew meant “Papyrus.”

“AS YOU CAN NOW OBSERVE FOR YOURSELVES, I AM COMPLETELY FINE.  THE DOCTOR IS DOING THEIR JOB VERY WELL, WHICH UNFORTUNATELY MEANS I WILL BE HERE OVER NIGHT, BUT I AM IN NO DANGER!”  

Soozen was carefully looking Papyrus over.  Checking to make sure he was  _really_  ok.  

“you should see the other guy,” Sans said.

“HOPEFULLY THEY ALSO LOOK PERFECTLY FINE.”

“knocked 'em to, what?  one?”  

“IT IS IMPORTANT, CHILDREN, TO KNOW YOUR OWN STRENGTH.  IT IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW THE LIMITS OF YOUR OPPONENT, WHEN FORCED TO FIGHT!”

“You really beat them up, huh,” Soozen said.  She relaxed.  Papyrus was okay, and he’d beaten the other guy so badly he probably had never been in real danger.  Sans could see her working through it, in her head.

“IF YOU WERE HOPING TO SEE SOME VERY COOL BATTLE SCARS, I UNDERSTAND.  BUT I AM AFRAID I WAS LEFT WITHOUT A SINGLE MARK ON ME.”  Papyrus had caught onto what Sans was doing.  

Soozen joined her sibling and Papyrus hugged both of them.  

The door opened.  When Sans felt the temperature start to creep up, he looked away from his brother.  Grillby was watching them in the doorway.  He nodded at Sans and came over to rest his hand on his shoulder.  Grillby didn’t say a word.  

Angel burbled excitedly.  

“I SEE,” Papyrus said.  He nodded, solemn.  "I APOLOGIZE FOR WORRYING YOU."

Grillby tugged at Sans and nodded at the door.  "…………just a minute?" he asked.  

"sure.  bro, you ok here?”  

“GO.  WHEN YOU RETURN, I WILL BE EXACTLY WHERE YOU LEFT ME.  UNFORTUNATELY.”  

-

Outside, Grillby immediately pulled Sans into a hug.  

“oof.”  Sans was crushed against a char-perfumed dress shirt.  "hugs all around, i guess."

"…………you’re ok?"

"huh? oh.  yeah.”  It should have hit him earlier that Grillby would be worried about him, too.  

“……yeah?”

“i guess i’ll be more ok once his hp stops dropping.”  

“Yes.  You look…”  He trailed off and shrugged, apparently unable to describe Sans.

“that’s about how i feel, yup,” Sans said.  "heh."  He was numb, mostly.  

Grillby straightened up.  "……….ok."  He nodded at the door to Papyrus’ room.  

"no need to stick around, grillby.  you should be flipping burgers right now.  some poor divorced loser isn’t getting his dinner ‘cause of me.  the guilt’s gonna eat me away.”  

He shook his head.  "…I’m here, now."

Sans wasn’t going to argue about it.  Grillby stepped back and examined him, nodding to himself.  He waited for Sans to start walking back to the room, and put his hand on his back and followed him in.  

"hey, bro, quick question,” Sans said.  Grillby left him for a minute to get them both chairs, since the bed was crowded with kids.  "you give undyne an update, yet?"

"I CALLED HER IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU HUNG UP THE PHONE,” Papyrus said.  

“ok.”  That meant they had maybe two hours before things started to get really exciting.  Undyne would burst into the room – if she hadn’t gotten a babysitter, there’d be a couple kids strapped to her, trailing some more behind her – and whatever info Sans hadn’t gotten out of Papyrus, she would.  It was kind of a relief, letting someone else take over.  

Sans hopped up into the chair Grillby brought for him.  Angel was still babbling.  They loved Grillby, because he was warm, but Papyrus was their honest favorite.  They always had to update him on their entire day whenever Papyrus was out for a few hours.  

“I didn’t steal  _anything_ ,” Soozen said, pouting about whatever her sibling accused her of.  She was reassured enough of Papyrus’ safety to go back to her earlier argument.  

Grillby sat down next to Sans and snuck his arm around his back.  

“SANS?  YOU WERE IN CHARGE WHEN THIS ALTERCATION OCCURRED.”

“yeah.”

“If he said I did, he’s lying!  He was sleeping!”  

Papyrus noticed Grillby’s arm around Sans’ shoulders, and frowned a little.  

“yup,” Sans said.  "is this a game?  who can tattle and get someone else sent to their room first?"

Both children remembered that there had been hitting, and Sans had been awake enough to notice  _that_ , and they lost interest in continuing the fight.  Sans thought about asking Grillby to take them back home, before they started to get bored or uncomfortable, but Undyne’s arrival would probably chase him off.  Until then, he didn’t mind him hanging around.  

It was nice having someone assume something like this would mess him up and be nice without him really having to talk about it.  

The nurse brought in a few toys and books from the waiting room and Angel was quickly distracted flipping through the already finger-stained pages of some ancient picture book.  Soozen stayed on the bed, probably so she could keep an eye on Papyrus.  

Papyrus switched gears and started trying to figure out how to restructure his schedule with the full day delay in mind.  Sans figured he was going to get asked to bring a laptop over at some point, so Papyrus could get  _something_  done.  

He looked up at Grillby and started to say something, but whatever joke he was about to make fell right out of his skull.  

Grillby could be a difficult read when he got in certain moods.  Sans could tell he was annoyed about something, but not what it was directed at.  He was almost positive it wasn’t him.  

"…….?"  Grillby noticed he had Sans’ attention.  His expression softened. Yeah, whatever it was, it wasn’t Sans.  

Sans started to ask if someone had dropped an ice cube down his shirt, but decided he didn’t want to deal with whatever was getting on his nerves.  He shrugged.  "nothing.  or, hey.  that hamburger cologne you’ve got on is making me hungry.  you smuggle anything in?"

He shook his head, flickering briefly in amusement.  "We could order a pizza."

"better get a couple.  undy’s here in an hour, with who knows how many kids.”

“It’s going to get crowded.”

“yup.  hey, i’ll call her.  we should at least get a number.”

“DON’T CALL UNDYNE WHEN SHE IS DRIVING, PLEASE,” Papyrus said.  She had highly trained reflexes that kept her from getting in an accident, even when distracted, but when she felt strongly about what she heard on the line, sometimes she pulled the steering wheel free.  

Sans called Alphys.  She told Sans that Undyne had burst into her lab, yelled “You’re fine with watching the kids by yourself a couple days, right?” and only gave a brief explanation before screeching off on her four hour drive to check up on Papyrus.  

After he hung up, he tried to order pizza, but the nurse came in at the wrong time and told him off for it.  

“We could pick pizza up and sneak it back,” Grillby said.  

“once we’ve got it, are they gonna rip it out of our mouths?” Sans agreed.  "we gotta get the kiddos outta here, anyway.“ Angel was done with the books and kept trying to absorb the dirty toys when no one was paying attention, and Soozen had fallen asleep.

"Would you take them?” Grillby asked.  "I made arrangements with a babysitter.  It’s just a longer trip for me.“  He looked away.  "And I wanted to ask your brother something.”  

“like, in private?”

He nodded.  

“WHAT SECRET IS THERE THAT YOU CANNOT SHARE WITH MY BROTHER?” Papyrus asked, confused.

Grillby gestured at Angel.

“OH, YES, I SEE.”  He nodded.  He just didn’t want to talk about it in front of the children.

“i guess i can drop 'em off,” Sans said.  He really didn’t want to leave, but if he didn’t send Grillby off, that meant he’d stick around longer.  He was liking having him there.  "one taxi service comin’ right up."

They woke up Soozen, reclaimed the legos from Angel, and Sans guided them through the door back to the house.  He grabbed a couple things for Papyrus, made sure the babysitter (their neighbor, still, except now being formally paid by Grillby) was aware they were back, and picked up a couple pizzas.  

When he got back to the doctor’s office, Papyrus was alone with the nurse in his room.  Sans left to look for Grillby and found him smoking outside.  Not cigarettes.  He was just giving off more smoke than usual.  

"got food,” Sans said.  

“I’ll come back in…in a minute.”  

He shrugged and went back to his chair next to Papyrus’ bed.  

“what’d grillbz need to ask you, anyway?” Sans asked.  He pulled a pizza box out of his inventory.

The little HP boost from the kids was gone.  Whatever Grillby asked, it wasn’t something nice.  

“IT HAS BEEN A TRYING DAY FOR EVERYONE,” Papyrus said.  

“…uh.” Grillby had really been fuming out there, hadn’t he?  "he didn’t yell at you or something, right?"  Sans didn’t want to deal with this.  

"…NOT… _EXACTLY_.  HE SAID…"  He sat up and winced.  "HE POINTED OUT A NUMBER OF THINGS I ALREADY KNOW, AND THEN LEFT.”

“ok.”

“LET ME SEE.  HE FIRST POINTED OUT THAT I HAD CHILDREN, AND THEN HE POINTED OUT THAT I HAVE A BROTHER WHO DEPENDS ON ME, WHICH I WAS ALSO AWARE OF, AND THEN HE SAID 'AND’ AND TRAILED OFF AND THEN HUGGED ME AND STOMPED OUT OF THE ROOM.  DOES THAT CLARIFY HIS BONE OF CONTENTION?”  

“yeah.  geez, grillby.”  

“DO YOU THINK HE HAS A POINT, SANS?”  

“nah.”  Now wasn’t the time for it, even if he did.

“I BELIEVE HE MIGHT.”  He sighed.  "PLEASE ACCEPT MY APOLOGIES FOR WORRYING YOU."

"i mean, no one wants to get that kinda phone call, but i’ll get over it.”  Sans wished he’d told Grillby to take a hike, now.  He should go out and tell him he needed to  _cool down_.  He stayed where he was and decided that he just got to eat more of the pizza. “once this is over, you can bake an apology lasagna or something.”  He didn’t want Papyrus to feel worse right now than he already did from the poison.  

“OH!  THAT IS THE PERFECT IDEA!”  Papyrus lit up.  "CONGRATULATIONS, BROTHER, THAT WAS A REAL BURST OF INSPIRATION!  THANK YOU.  ONCE I AM ALLOWED TO LEAVE THIS UNCOMFORTABLE PRISON, I WILL MAKE EVERYONE SOMETHING NICE."  He stared into space, considering what to make for people.  "MAYBE EVEN A CAKE, FOR THE CHILDREN. SANS…”  His tone turned uneasy.  "I  _AM_  AWARE THAT I HAVE A NUMBER OF OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES.  AND THAT CARING FOR THEM IS THE MOST PROMINENT ONE.  BUT…"

"yeah?”

“IF THAT CONFUSED HUMAN HAD NOT MET ME FIRST, WHO WOULD THEY HAVE RUN INTO INSTEAD?  WHAT IF THERE WAS THE SAME MISUNDERSTANDING?”  

As far as “who,” Sans would be be happier with “anyone else, other than Papyrus.”  And, what would have happened?  Maybe whoever met 'em would have died.  Maybe one of the teens who liked to hang around outside down.  

Papyrus had gotten training direct from the head of the royal guard.  Most of the rest of the monsters in town were ex-office workers or people who would’ve been teens when the barrier came down.  Kids.  Papyrus was the main person in town who could go up against a stranger and have a good chance of winning, and he was  _also_  the only one who wouldn’t leave a body and a big problem behind when he won.  

Still, Sans wished someone else had dealt with it.  He couldn’t get that mad at Grillby when he knew he would personally rather some random kid get killed than have his brother face even this small amount of risk.

He wasn’t telling Papyrus any of this.  

“i get it,” Sans said.  "you’re too cool to let anyone else take a hit for you.“  

Papyrus wrung his thin blanket in his hands, still uneasy.  "OF COURSE I AM." 

"you want to protect people.”  

“YES.  HOWEVER…I DO UNDERSTAND THAT EVEN THOUGH I WAS NOT IN ANY DANGER IT IS…NOT THE BEST FOR THEM TO HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THEIR NEW GUARDIAN BEING HURT.  CONSIDERING…”  He looked away.

The kids wouldn’t take another loss like that well.  Sans didn’t want to think about that.  

“AND, OF COURSE I DO ALSO HAVE A BROTHER WHOSE HEALTH I NEED TO CONSIDER.”

“i’m ok.”  

“…YES.”  He was quiet.  Sans wasn’t sure Papyrus believed him.  "BUT I FIND MYSELF CONFLICTED.  THE ELDEST WILL VERY SOON BE AT THE AGE WHEN MANY CHILDREN LIKE TO ASSERT THEIR INDEPENDENCE."

Papyrus had recently started reading a book on how to put together fancy boxed lunches.  Sans thought he was prepping for when Soozen would start wanting to loiter in the woods with her friends.

"I DO NOT WANT TO HURT HER BY BEING HURT.  BUT…IT SEEMS LIKE I AM WITHOUT ANY KIND OF SAFE OPTION.”  

“rock and a hard place, huh.”  Sans rubbed his skull.  "maybe they’ll bring some people up here now that something’s actually happened."

"NORMALLY I WOULD NOT WANT ANYONE TO TAKE ON SUCH A RISK FOR ME.”

“hey, you’ve already shown everyone how tough and cool you are, right?  let someone else get a shot at it.”  

“YES, I SUPPOSE THAT IS ONE WAY TO LOOK AT IT.”  

Someone lightly knocked on the door.  Sans guessed that it was Grillby.  He didn’t say anything.

“COME IN!”  Papyrus sat up straight.  

Grillby’s flame was lower than normal.  "…sorry," he said. ”……for losing my temper."  He closed the door behind him.

"guess you’re kind of a hot head,” Sans said.  

“I CANNOT DISMISS THE VALIDITY OF SOME OF YOUR POINTS,” Papyrus said, “NO APOLOGY IS NECESSARY!”  

He shook his head.  "I should have just picked a better time."

"COMPLETELY UNRELATED AND OFF TOPIC,” Papyrus said, “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF CAKE, GRILLBY?”  

“…….what?”

“chocolate lava cake,” Sans answered for him.

“OH!  WAIT.  THAT WAS A JOKE.”  

“it’s actually just lava.  shaped like a cake,” Sans said.  "tough to get the ingredients around here.“  

"I DON’T TRUST ANYTHING YOU ARE SAYING RIGHT NOW.”  

“you know you lava my jokes.”  

“I–”

A loud BANG interrupted them, as the door came off the hinges and flew across the room, hitting the opposite wall.  Sans wasn’t directly in its path, but he and his chair were suddenly sitting on the other side of Papyrus’ bed.  The door was partially singed from surprising Grillby and passing close to his head. 

“Ngahhh!!!!   PAPYRUS!  I heard you let someone kick your ass!”  Undyne stood in the open door.  

“UNDYNE! LANG–”  Papyrus looked around.  "OH.  THERE ARE NO CHILDREN HERE."

"NO SHIT!  Tell me where the jerk is, so I can spear their junk into dust!”  

“I DON’T THINK HUMANS GENERALLY…TURN INTO DUST?  I BELIEVE I READ THAT THEY TURN INTO STRANGE LOOKING, IMMOBILE SKELETONS.”  He shuddered.

“They do if you hit 'em hard enough and enough times!  Let me at 'em!”

Sans finished eating his slice of pizza.  


	6. Chapter 6

Grillby went home to put the kids to bed and stayed with them overnight, but was back in the morning.   Sans was sure that since he had a little time to prepare, the bar would be open and serving people without their boss.  

Undyne ran out right after she arrived.  She wanted to see if she could track down the human, but when she had no luck she was back by midnight.  Sans had been almost nodding off for hours by that point – his head falling down to his chest and then jerking awake and needing to check Papyrus' HP.  Once he gave up on his nap, the three of them played cards until Grillby arrived with breakfast.  

The doctor prepped a cure-all, but luckily they didn’t have to use it.  Those had some bad side effects.  Exactly twenty-four hours after Papyrus got hit by that strange weapon, his HP stopped dropping.  He cringed, automatically, waiting for the brief stab of pain that came along with every tiny health hit, but nothing happened.

They wouldn’t let Papyrus run right out the door like he wanted.  Sans did his best to keep his brother entertained with great jokes while they waited, but that just seemed to make him want to leave even more.  

Half the town came in to visit Papyrus while they waited.  Sans figured that was one positive in a situation full of negatives - Papyrus had to know that the people there cared about him.  It wasn’t exactly a cure-all for his brother’s lingering insecurity, but it had to help.

Papyrus got to sleep in his own bed that night.  Sans told him and the kids a bedtime story and watched them doze off in a little pile on Papyrus’ bed.  Grillby carried Angel back to their bedroom and Sans decided to let Soozen keep sleeping where she was.  

His own bed was waiting for him.  He flopped down onto it, face first, and nodded off right there.  

He woke again a while later.  Grillby was moving him up near the pillow.

“thanks,” Sans mumbled.  

Grillby made a quiet noise of acknowledgment.  After a while, Sans heard him walking around their room, getting dressed for bed.  

“i’d make a joke about beds,” Sans said, “but i haven’t made it up yet.”

“You have never made a bed in your life,” Grillby said.  

“slander is what they call that.”  

He sighed.  "I was worried you’d have trouble sleeping, and then I woke you up."

"sleeping’s easy.”

“…yes. You can do it with your eye sockets closed.  I know.”

“when i have trouble i just remember to sleep right on the edge.  then i drop right off.”  

That got a laugh out of him.  Sans won.  

Grillby climbed onto the bed next to him.  The room got lighter, even through his eyelids.  Sans finally looked.  Grillby was hovering, flickering with concern.  Sans reached up and patted his face.  "it’s ok, pal.  a full night’s sleep, i’ll be right as…"  Grillby didn’t have a high opinion of rain.  "uh, ever.”

Grillby nodded and settled down, pulling Sans against his chest.  It was pretty cozy.  

Sans wondered if Undyne would track down the weirdo who was sneaking around their town.  The  _weirdos_ , maybe.  Would she kill ‘em?  She wasn’t really as into that, anymore, but he could still see her crossing that line if she thought people she cared about were in danger.  Sans wouldn’t exactly cry if that happened, but he hoped they could keep Papyrus from finding out.

They’d tell him that whoever they were just got intimidated by Pap’s greatness.  That’d work.  

Grillby murmured something.  A reassurance, Sans thought, even though he couldn’t understand it.  His words were quieter than the fire that Sans’ head was pressed against.

Grillby had to be pretty upset about what happened, too.  He was making himself feel better by being there for them and taking care of the important little things like finding babysitters and bringing breakfast.  He could be a hot-head, sure, and really get fired up about things.  But he had a warm heart.  

Sans snickered to himself.  

“…hm?” Grillby asked.

“you’ve got a really warm heart, grillbz.  i’d say that’s your best feature.”

“Go to sleep, Sans.”

“it’s tough when i keep coming up with all these great jokes, but i’ll give it a shot.”

Grillby shushed him, and Sans eventually settled down.  He was warm all the way through.

–

_BANG! BANG!  BANG!  BANG!_

Something heavy was slamming against the bedroom door.  

“jus’ tell 'em to come in an’ kill me,” Sans said.  "don’t make me get up for it."

"…Papyrus, maybe?"  Grillby’s voice, when he was half awake, was a puzzle to try and understand.  

Sans groaned.  

The knob rattled and the door flew open.  

"Outta bed, LOSERS!”  Oh, right.  Undyne was visiting.  

“nah,” Sans said.  He felt Grillby put his arm around him, like he was trying to shield him from the noise.

“This is your morning wake up call!  Up and AT 'EM!”

“why.”

“There’ll be someone here soon you’ll want to see,” she said.  "You probably want to put pants on!"

He hadn’t bothered to get completely undressed before bed. Boxers were close enough to pants, if people were going to make him wake up early.  "who'zz it?”  He moved Grillby’s limp arm off of him.

“Fuhuhuhu!  You think I’m going to ruin the surprise?  Pry that bony butt off the mattress and let’s go!”

Grillby suddenly grabbed Sans’ arm.  "…don’t."

"you don’t have to get up,” Sans said.  He was pretty sure it was one of Papyrus’ friends.  

“Ok.”  He let go and pulled his pillow over his face to keep him from hearing Undyne.  He just gave up on Sans the second he knew  _he_  didn’t have to wake up, too.  Traitor.

“What’d he say?” she asked.  "Is he getting up?"

"eh, let the fire man sleep in.”  Sans dangled his legs over the edge of the bed.  His slippers were there, waiting for him.  "he works nights."

"Oh, right.  Rest up!”

Sans shuffled over to the door.  He heard dishes clanking around in the kitchen.  Papyrus must be getting ready for their visitor.

“I HEARD A CAR PULL UP!”  Papyrus yelled.  Yup, his voice came from the kitchen.

“Yeah!!  Let’s go greet 'em!”  Undyne ran off.

“THE KITCHEN IS A MESS, UNDYNE.  STALL THEM FOR ME!”  

Sans left his bedroom and went out the front door.  He rubbed his eye sockets at the sudden bright morning light.  The car parking in their driveway was one he recognized, immediately.  

One of the doors opened and Frisk stepped out.  

They were in a dark blue suit - one of the outfits they wore on official business.  Sans read simple determination in their expression as they took a look around.  

“hey, kiddo.”  Sans held up a hand.  He could see movement in the car. Was there someone else in there?  Wait.

He took a step back through the house door and popped over to the opposite side of the car.  Toriel  _was_  inside, and about to open up her door and get out.  

He was just in time.  He used his magic to lock it.  Toriel jiggled the handle.  

“Oh, these hands!”  She huffed and unlocked the door again.  

Sans relocked it just before she tried to open it.  

This time, she looked out the window.  

“hi,” Sans said.

“Oh.  It is Mr. Funnybones himself, I see.”  She laughed, and then looked him over, momentarily alarmed.

“what?”  He suddenly realized she wouldn’t immediately know he was covered from the waist down from where she was sitting.  "oh.  nah, i’m decent here.  i put my slippers on before i went outside."  He winked.  "so i bet that means i’m more dressed than you.”  

“It is true.”  She unlocked the door and didn’t try to open it.  He guessed Tori was trying to trick him.  She’d leave it like that and quick open the door when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. “Has Grillby been properly feeding you?  You do not have any meat on your bones!”

They both laughed, impressed with the quality of her joke.

“you know i only married the guy 'cause he’s hot, tori.”

She snorted.  He watched her slowly reach towards the door handle, and then stop.  She was meeting his eye sockets, and they were both trying very hard not to laugh.  It was a stand off.  She moved her hand and knocked on the glass in front of his face.  Nice strategy. She wanted to startle him while she opened the door with her other hand.

He was ready, but Toriel didn’t follow through.  "Oh," she said.  Her expression softened.  "Do you know what this reminds me of?”

He did.  "nah."  He shrugged.  "wait.  i guess i’ve done this gag a coupla times." 

She knocked on the door.  "Knock knock.”  

“who’s there.”  

“Cargo.”

“cargo who?”

“Car go 'beep beep!’”  

They both burst out laughing.  Sans’ ribs were starting to ache.  He knocked on the door.

“Oh!   Who is there, I wonder?”

They spend the next twenty minutes telling each other knock knock jokes.  

Sans’ phone rang.  He took it out of his inventory and saw that Frisk was calling him.  He looked up.   Frisk was on the other side of the driveway staring at him, phone at their ear.

“i’d better get this,” Sans said.  "seems important."

He answered his phone.  Frisk told him to stop fooling around with their mom and head inside.  

"ok.  just promise you don’t tell grillby i was, uh,  fooling around with your mom." 

Toriel laughed, loud, from inside the car.  

Frisk gave him a thumbs up.  Toriel opened the door and got out, stretching until her back clicked.

"ok so–”  Sans started.

She lifted him up in the air and hugged him, tight.  His slippers fell off his feet and plopped onto the driveway.  

“great. now i’m just as undressed as you are,” Sans grumbled, into her fur.  

“I have missed you, you horrible little gremlin,” she said.  

“yeah.  right back atcha, you old goat.”  They used to see each other almost every day.  He’d let himself get too lazy.  He couldn’t believe she was here.

She set him back down next to his slippers.  Frisk came over and took her arm, and the three of them went inside.  

-

Sans could hear Undyne talking loudly on the phone in the living room.  Papyrus was rushing around the kitchen, trying to get food together for all his guests.  He looked happy.

“You were ill so recently – please, Papyrus, allow me to lend you a hand,” Toriel said.

“I AM COMPLETELY FINE NOW,” Papyrus said.  

“eh, she’d make any excuse to help out,” Sans said.  

“WELL, IF MY ILLNESS WAS JUST AN EXCUSE TO FULFILL YOUR DREAM OF HELPING ME IN MY PREPARATIONS, I DO NOT SUPPOSE IT WOULD BE RIGHT TO DENY YOU,” Papyrus said.

“Thank you, Papyrus.”  

Frisk had been inside before they went to drag Sans and Toriel in with them.  They’d already reassured themself that Papyrus was fine, but they were still inclined to stay in the kitchen with him.  They peered into the large pot on the stove, curious what Papyrus was making.

“How much?  I don’t know, just estimate it!”  Undyne’s voice carried from the other room.  "Wow.  Ok, that’s a lot of puke, but we’ve seen more from that little vomit-cannon!  They’re just letting you know they’re worried ‘cause I’m not there!“  She was quiet, for a few seconds.  "He’d run over in a second if you asked.”  

Grillby opened the kitchen door and joined the crowd.  He was burning low, clearly still exhausted.  

From the other room: “That’s really sneaky!  Alphys, you’re brilliant!”  

“Grillby, greetings,” Toriel said.  "It has been several weeks, has it not?  Are you here to lend us your aid?"

It was too much conversation for Grillby, so soon after waking up.  He stared at her while her words sunk in.  "…yes?" he tried.

"of course he’s helping out.  aw.  everyone’s making breakfast for me. this is great,” Sans said.  

“You and Frisk can set the table, or you can leave the kitchen,” Toriel said.  

Frisk started getting out silverware, and Sans went into the living room.  Undyne was making smooching noises at her phone, so Sans realized he’d made the wrong choice.  He settled down on the couch anyway.  He put his feet up on the coffee table.  Now that the excitement was over, he felt all that extra energy draining out of him.  He wanted a quick nap before he was woken up for breakfast.  

Undyne sat heavily on the couch next to him.  She sighed, loudly.  "She’s so great."

"yeah,” Sans said.

“I told her to call Asgore over if it was getting tough, and she said she’d call him over for tea.  There’s no way he won’t volunteer to babysit.  She won’t even have to ask!”

“smart.”  Well, it was a way of avoiding asking, anyway.

“Right!  I kind of put this on her out of nowhere.  Maybe she’s right and five’s enough, since it’s getting kind of tough to watch 'em alone.”

Five?  “congrats.”

“Don’t tell anyone yet!  I want to surprise your brother next time he visits.”

“got it.”  Sans slid down a little more.

“He really freaked all of us out.  I’m really proud of him for defending everyone!  But…holy shit, if anything had happened to him…”  She trailed off.  

Sans risked a look.  She was shaking with anger, staring straight forward.

“that woulda sucked,” Sans said, shrugging.  "but it didn’t."

"That human still needs to get their ass kicked.”

He couldn’t disagree with that.  

“A 100% non-fatal ass kicking!”

“right.”  Papyrus wouldn’t want anything else.

“NGHAAAAA!  Now that the brat’s here, they’ll get pissed if I try it.  I’d be really gentle!  It’d be more like a loving caress!  Just softly toss 'em into a brick wall!" 

"heh.  draw little happy faces on your spears.”  

“Perfect! They’ll be GRATEFUL!  Or they’ll SAY they are, when they’re CRYING and telling me how they’re never hurting anyone ever again!”

Sans didn’t regret missing his nap, anymore.  "the kiddo’s probably right, though."

"Yeah.  But I’ve got to punch SOMETHING before I go home.”

Sans moved a little bit away from her.

“Not you!  You’re too flimsy.  It’d be like punching a pillow.  Not satisfying at all!”

“thanks.”

Sans managed to get a nap in while she went down through a list of different things that could stand to be punched.

The number of people visiting made it feel almost like Gyftmas.  Sans was happy for Papyrus.  He had to see how important he was.  They’d probably be dealing with visitors from all over for the next couple weeks.  

Tori set a platter of waffles on the table.  Yeah, like Gyftmas, except not one of the good ones.  One of the ones where the air was stuffed thick with anxiety.  Sans could see the worry on everyone’s faces, and in the uncomfortable ways they carried themselves.  

Sans wasn’t sure what Frisk’s plan was, or what Undyne was going to end up doing.  Things could go wrong very quickly.  

Sans took his seat at the table and yawned.

“I do hope we are not interrupting your nap by bringing you food,” Toriel said, laughing.  

“man, tori.  you guys are rude.”  He rested his head on the table, and Frisk sat down next to him and tried to balance a plate on his skull.

“The longer we sit around, the more time that messed up human punk has to get away!”  Undyne said.  She didn’t act  _so_  rushed she was going to skip breakfast, though.  She sat down with them.

“ANYTHING WE ATTEMPT WILL BE MORE SUCCESSFUL AFTER BREAKING OUR FASTS ON THIS DELICIOUS MEAL,” Papyrus said.

“You aren’t doing anything!” Undyne said, sharp, and then pulled back.  She gave Papyrus a reassuring smile.  "You still have to recover, right?  Your doctor will kick my butt if they find out I let you go."

Frisk said they wanted to see if they could figure it out themselves, first.  Undyne had gotten a good description of the human out of Papyrus by getting him to brag about the fight, and from what they had heard, they thought they might be a kid.  

"Someone needs to speak with that child’s parents,” Toriel said.

Sans closed his eyes, listening, but not wanting to engage.  Shouldn’t other humans be going with Frisk?  They weren’t technically a kid anymore, but they were still very young.  All of this was happening too quick.  Sans didn’t think Frisk was actually there in any official capacity, despite their fancy clothes.

He sure didn’t like this.  Humans were pretty good at killing other humans.  What if something happened to Frisk?  It was a pretty old worry, but the situation felt like the time he’d knocked a broken bone right when it was almost done healing.  

Thinking it over, Tori was acting pretty strange, too.  She wasn’t happy about whatever Frisk was up to.  Sans didn’t think she would have run out to visit so fast herself once she was reassured that Papyrus was okay.  She would have stopped by, but she wouldn’t usually just drop her responsibilities.

“I TRUST YOU WILL BE CAREFUL, FRISK,” Papyrus said.  He sounded more and more like a mom every day.  

Frisk nodded.  They said that they knew what they were doing.  They weren’t going to kill anyone, and they weren’t going to  _be_  killed.  Their confidence reassured everyone at the table.  

“cool line, kid,” Sans said.

Sans ate what was probably technically more than his share of breakfast.  Grillby left for work, already exhausted and moody.  He was going to be a lot of fun when he got home that night.  Frisk left after him, and everyone was a little bit on edge, again.  Half an hour after they left, Undyne went after them.  Toriel fussed in the kitchen and Papyrus walked back and forth from where Sans was napping in the living room, to where she was in the kitchen.  He wanted to follow Undyne, but he had made a promise to her.

Sans tried to distract both of them by sharing knock-knock jokes with Toriel.  Papyrus found them obnoxious enough to forget about following Undyne, at least for a short time.  Toriel quickly lost steam, though.  

“I am going to…step out for a little while,” she said.  "I would like to clear my head."

"i just use a cue tip but whatever works,” Sans said.  He wanted to ask her if she was going to go after her kid, too, but decided to just let her go do what she was going to do.

“WHY DID EVERYONE RUN OUT SO QUICKLY?”  Papyrus asked, nervous.  "I AM NOT WORRIED!  THEY KEEP SAYING THERE IS NOTHING TO BE WORRIED ABOUT, SO I BELIEVE THEM!  BUT…THEY ARE ACTING IN WAYS THAT…"

"well, tori’ll always be uneasy 'cuz she’s frisk’s mom,” Sans said. “you know undyne just wants part of the action, even if there isn’t any.”

“YES, RIGHT.”  He didn’t seem reassured.  "I KNOW THAT I SAID I WOULD NOT GO, HOWEVER…“

"nuh-uh, bro.  there’ll be a kid back from school soon, and you know if it’s just me here i’ll give 'em whatever candy i find for their snack and call it done.”

“THAT’S SO UNHEALTHY!  I ALREADY PREPARED A NOODLE SALAD FOR THEIR POST SCHOOL MEAL!  AND IF THEY PREFER SOMETHING ELSE, YOUR FRIEND MADE THEM SOME…SNAIL THING.”

“i’ve got half a packet of m&ms in my pocket, somewhere,” Sans said.

“THIS IS BLACKMAIL!  FRAUD!  OR AT LEAST YOU ARE BEING KIND OF A JERK.”

“maybe.”

“YOU KNOW THEIR NUTRITIONAL HEALTH IS VERY IMPORTANT.”

“yeah.”

“YOU COULD JUST SAY 'I DO NOT THINK YOU SHOULD GO EITHER, BROTHER.’  I MEAN, 'bro.’”  He considered.  "BRO ACTUALLY IS A VERY COOL WAY TO SAY BROTHER!  IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME THAT YOU MIGHT BE SAYING SOMETHING COOL, 'BRO.’"

"i do not think you should go either, brother,” Sans said.

“IN YOUR OWN WORDS WOULD BE PREFERABLE, BUT I WILL ACCEPT IT.  I AM OUTNUMBERED!  MAYBE THAT IS EASY WHEN YOU ARE NUMBER ONE.”  

“it’s tough work, being at the top.”

“IT IS!  NOT MORE THAN I CAN HANDLE, HOWEVER.”  He sighed.  "I DO WANT TO REGISTER MY PROTEST.  I WISH THEY WOULD ALLOW ME TO HELP."

"yeah.  look, though.  you remember what  _you_  were like after grillbz got sick real bad, right?”

“THAT IS NOT…”  He considered.  "YES, THAT IS VERY SIMILAR."

"you’d get mad if you didn’t think he was eating the right stuff.”

“YES, BUT, CELERY, SANS!  THAT IS 99% WATER!  THERE IS NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE IN THAT FOR A FIRE MONSTER!”  He stomped his foot a few times, and then settled down, sighing.  "I DO ACTUALLY ALREADY UNDERSTAND."

"frisk’ll go out and take care of this freak.  yell at their parents or something, i dunno.  then in a couple weeks they’ll send some people down who’ll be paid to guard this town, and you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself anymore.”

“…RIGHT.”

“c'mon. sit over here with me.”  

Papyrus sighed and went over to the couch.  He sat down and sighed again, louder.  He crossed his arms and tapped his foot.

“you’re so relaxed.”

“EVERYONE IS EITHER ANGRY AT ME OR WORRIED ABOUT ME.  THEY SHOULD TRUST MY STRENGTH!  OR AT LEAST NOTICE THAT I AM STILL HERE, AND THERE IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.”

“grillby’s not that mad.”

“THE EX-QUEEN GAVE ME AN EXCEEDINGLY LONG BUT SKILLFULLY DELIVERED LECTURE WHILE WE WERE MAKING BREAKFAST.  I BELIEVE SHE THINKS SHE IS ACTUALLY MY MOTHER?  I WAS NOT QUITE SURE HOW TO DISABUSE HER OF THAT NOTION.”

“tori did?”

“YES! EVERY TIME FRISK LEFT THE ROOM WITH DISHES, SHE WOULD LOOK AT ME AND SAY 'Now one more thing, my dear.’”

“that doesn’t sound that mad.”

“I COULD SEE THE BARELY CONTAINED RAGE IN HER EYES!  IT WAS LIKE WITHIN HER SOCKETS WERE TINY ENCASED UNDYNES, WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO BREAK FREE AND GIVE ME THE MOST PAINFUL NOOGIE OF MY LIFE!”  

“oh no." 

"AND OF COURSE YOU AND THE CHILDREN ARE VERY UPSET.  AND NOW EVERYONE IS WORRIED ABOUT FRISK.  BECAUSE OF MY ACTIONS, APPARENTLY.”

Well, if the human had attacked someone other than Papyrus, Frisk probably wouldn’t have rushed down.  That was going a little far in blaming Papyrus, though.  No one wanted Frisk to go, either.  

“it’s the worst, right?”  Sans sighed.  "doing what you think’s right, and having it go bad.  they’ll get over it, papyrus.  you don’t monitor what grillbz eats anymore, right?"

"I DO NOT TELL HIM, SINCE HE FOUND IT SO IRRITATING.”  

“that’s just as good.”  

Papyrus rapped his hand on the arm of the couch.  

Sans patted him on the back.  "it’ll be ok, bro.  i can feel it in my bones," he lied.

"NOW IT IS TIME TO PLEASE STOP TRYING TO CHEER ME UP.”

“what?  that didn’t tickle your funny bone?”

“YOU WORE IT DOWN AND AWAY BY REPEATING THAT JOKE SO MANY TIMES!”

“maybe you should’ve gotten the doc to look at that, too.  if your bones start wearing down, one day i’ll tell you a joke so good, you’ll just fall to pieces.”

“IF ONLY!”  He took the blanket off the back of the couch and dropped it on Sans’ head.  "GO TO SLEEP!"

"i’m not a bird,” Sans said.

“YOU MUST BE TOO EXHAUSTED TO SAY ANOTHER WORD.”

“there’s a bird under here, though.  be free, little bird.”  He lifted the blanket up enough so he could flip Papyrus off.

“HAVE A PILLOW AS WELL!”  

Sans felt one hit his head.  

Papyrus stood up and started loudly pacing.  After a minute, he sat back down next to Sans again.  "HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN?"

"let me check.  half past 'i don’t feel like getting my phone out and i can’t see the clock because there’s a blanket on my head.’”  

“SOUNDS LIKE IT IS TIME FOR SANS TO BE SO LAZY HE CANNOT MOVE A BLANKET OR TAKE OUT HIS PHONE.  IT IS THE SAME TIME AS EVERY OTHER TIME, IT SEEMS?  WE ARE FROZEN IN A MOMENT, FOREVER.  HOW TRAGIC.”  

“it’s not that bad.  how long’ve they been gone?”

“IT HAS BEEN OVER AN HOUR SINCE TORIEL LEFT.  SHOULDN’T THEY BE BACK BY NOW, SANS?  I CAN’T IMAGINE IT TAKES THIS LONG TO RESOLVE SOMETHING LIKE THIS.  IT WOULD NOT TAKE THE GREAT PAPYRUS THIS LONG.”

“frisk can try, but they can’t live up to your standard.”

“TRUE.  BUT…THAT’S NO GOOD.  I NEED THEM TO GET BACK VERY SOON.”

“yeah.”

“MAYBE I SHOULD CALL.”

“if you want.”

“BUT WHAT IF THEY ARE CONCENTRATING ON AN IMPORTANT STRATEGY?”

“yeah.  maybe you should hold off.”

“OR MAYBE–”  He broke off and sighed.  "NEVER MIND."

"ok.”

“…I WILL CALL IF THEY ARE NOT BACK IN AN HOUR.”

“ok.  if it helps, i don’t think anything that bad happened to them.”  Time was still moving forward, like normal.

“AH, SANS.  EVER THE OPTIMIST.  OBLIVIOUS TO THE DANGEROUS REALITIES OF THE WORLD.”

“that’s me.”

“NEVERTHELESS…I FEEL VERY STRONGLY THAT YOU ARE RIGHT!  THEY WILL BE BACK SOON, AND I WILL MAKE EVERYONE LUNCH!”  

Sans leaned against him.  The blanket was still over his head, but he was pretty sure he was leaning against Papyrus’ arm.  "sounds good."

"YES!  I AM POSITIVE!”

“yeah.”  Sans felt a little bit of optimism leeching off his brother and into him.  Anyway, even if everything was going to go horribly wrong, what was the point in worrying about it right at that moment?  If something went bad and they went back, well, this was all he had, really.  

Sans didn’t think Frisk would reset if they were hurt – he just didn’t think they wouldn’t, either.  He didn’t know.

Papyrus sighed and gave him a hug.  "IF YOU ARE WAITING FOR ME TO REMOVE THAT BLANKET FOR YOU, THEN I AM AFRAID YOU WILL BE WEARING IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE."

"i like it under here.”

“SANS. OF COURSE YOU DO.”

-

Sans tried to keep his brother distracted with some of his famous, high quality jokes.  They were both too aware of the time for it to really work.  Grillby sent regular texts and Sans wasn’t sure what to tell him.  

Papyrus sent a message to Frisk.  Sans hovered nearby when he finally got a call back, well after lunch.  Sans overheard that things were “resolved,” whatever that meant.  

Papyrus hung up and started running around, putting together a late lunch.  Undyne, Toriel, and Frisk returned together.  

Frisk’s expression was similar to the one Sans remembered them wearing the first time they met.  They were determined.  Grim, almost.  

“hey, good work out there, kiddo,” Sans said.  "sit down and take a load off."

They sat down on the other side of the room, but when their butt hit the seat, the chair cushion under them had disappeared.  They let out a loud yelp when the seat was lower than they expected.

"heh.  sorry.  guess that was pretty  _low_  of me.”  

Toriel laughed.  "Sans, you are always low."  She sat down right next to Sans on the couch.  Her sudden weight made him slide right up against her.  She laughed again and put her arm around him.  

"hey. i resemble that.”

The tension in the room started to dissolve.  Frisk made a sound of disgust.  They got up and started looking around their chair for their cushion.  At that moment they looked more irritated than anything else.

“Well!”  Toriel sat up straight.  "Everything is settled, at least for a little while.  Everyone is safe.  Let us all move on to happier things.  It is so rare I get to visit."

"you’re missing out, not stopping by.”  Sans wished she’d move closer, but he was never going to ask.

“Yes.  It really is a shame,” she said, serious.

Frisk gave up on the cushion and sat down again.  They were suddenly a foot higher in the air, all the extra cushions in the room stacked up underneath them.  

Toriel laughed behind her hand.  "Do not fall, my child!"

Frisk crossed their arms across their chest.  They stayed where they were. Undyne came in from the kitchen and yelled for them to try and keep their balance, and she lifted the chair.  

Frisk held on to the cushions with all their might.  Their face was clear of anything other than alarm.  

"Wait!  The pillows are toppling over!”  Toriel hopped up and Sans almost fell over, himself.

Frisk asked if she was coming to help them.

“Of course, my child.”  She held the cushions steady.  Sans was pretty sure that wasn’t the help Frisk wanted.

“Three cheers for Frisk, and then I’ll toss ‘em!  Whoever catches them first, wins!”  Undyne said.

Papyrus burst in from the kitchen.  "DON’T THROW CHILDREN AROUND IN MY HOUSE!  NOT WITHOUT INVITING ME!"

Angel slid in after him, bumping against his leg.

"Frisk isn’t a kid anymore!”

“STILL, IT WOULD BE NICE TO BE INVITED.”

“FINE!”  Undyne waved him over.  "Consider this your invitation.“

He walked over to her and she immediately grabbed him with her free arm and started to give him a noogie.  "THIS IS NOT AN INVITATION!”

“Frisk will always be my child,” Toriel said, ignoring Papyrus’ distress.  

Undyne grinned.  "Great!  Then catch 'em!"

The next few minutes went by very quickly.  Sans stayed on the couch.  Angel slowly slid over and he helped them up next to him so they could watch TV, too.  It was a little tough to pay attention with all the noise.

"see, kiddo,” Sans said to them, “frisk is pretty lucky to have so many great friends like us.”

Angel nodded.

No one could pull people out of a bad mood like their little group could.  Sure, sometimes it was just moving them from one kind of bad mood to another, but you couldn’t get everything you wanted.

Grillby came home early, but everyone was already asleep.  It had been a long day.  Sans was dozing on the couch.  He woke when Grillby walked in.  

He’d given up his and Grillby’s bed to Toriel so she didn’t have to get a room at the inn nearby.  Frisk was asleep on the floor next to the couch, on a pile of cushions and covered in all the blankets Papyrus and Undyne could find for them.  

Grillby walked over to Frisk and knelt down next to them.  Sans rolled onto his side and opened an eye so he could watch them.  

Grillby shook his head and took off the blankets, piling them up in his arms.  The guy sure hated blankets.

“leave like one for the kid,” Sans said.

“…am I sleeping in here, too?”  Grillby asked, quiet.

“yeah, right, never mind.” Having skin must be a pain, with how heat sensitive it could be.  Sans was glad he didn’t have to deal with that.

Grillby took off his tie and vest and settled in with Sans.  He could have taken one of the cushionless chairs, but he and Sans had slept on the couch before.  It was cramped, but manageable.  They talked in low voices.

Sans had sent Grillby a text when Frisk got back, but had left out details, so he filled Grillby in.

“they were kind’ve in a mood when they got back,” Sans said.  "but they’re ok now." He shrugged.  

Frisk shifted on the floor and looked up at them.  

"why was that, huh?”  Sans asked.  "you eavesdropping?  rude."

Frisk said the kid they found was LV 2.

Sans felt a little sick.  "well, guess if there are some missing grandmas, there’s no point calling out the search party.”  

Grillby had shrunk back.  

Frisk said that no one got to LV 2 on accident.  There was something about the way they said it that was familiar.  

“yeah.  what a freak.”

“But…”  Grillby slowly warmed, again.  "They won’t hurt anyone again, right?"

Frisk wouldn’t have understood, so Sans answered his question.  "yeah, they said they dealt with it.”

Frisk said that they had done what they could.

“gave that kid a lecture and told on 'em to their folks, right?”  Sans asked, winking.  "that showed them, i bet."  They had all been hoping that Papyrus was the first monster the human had fought.  Oh well.  Sans was tired.

"I wonder who it was,” Grillby said.  "Who hasn’t been around?"  His flames were getting red - colder.  "………God."

"think of someone?”

“…no, but…I might, and…”  He didn’t want to think of anyone.

“probably some of the farmers or those guys who live outside town.  no point thinking about it now.  not like there’s a way to fix it.”

Frisk nodded.  There was no going back.  The dead stayed dead.

“that’s the plan, right, kid?”

They didn’t look happy about it, but they nodded again.

“still.  sucks, though.”

There was no disagreeing with that.

“I’m not going to sleep,” Grillby said, sitting up.

“yeah.  pick a movie, frisk.  let’s make this a party.”

Frisk stood up and sat on the couch with him.  Grillby went into the kitchen and made snacks.  When he came back, he seemed calm again.  

Grillby put his arm around Sans’ shoulders and held him tight against his side until Papyrus burst into the room a little before dawn.  Sans thought Papyrus was more like sunshine than the sun was.  It didn’t say anything good about him, but Sans knew that he would be able to deal with it no matter who it was that had died.  His brother was still there. 


	7. Chapter 7

Other visitors stopped by to visit.  Papyrus was delighted that so many people came by just for him.  He was popular.  

Having everyone around was pretty convenient.  Sans didn’t have to do anything to make sure his brother was taking care of himself.  When Undyne woke Sans up in the middle of the night by screaming “Get your bony butt in that bed, Papyrus!” in the same tone of voice she probably used with her kids, Sans didn’t have to get up and make sure his brother knew he was supposed to be sleeping.

One by one, the crowd thinned down, and things started to return to normal.  While everyone was there, it was easy to pretend that he wasn’t bothered by what had happened.  When they left, the house was suddenly too quiet at night.

The kids were tucked into bed and Grillby was out working.  Papyrus, even when he didn’t sleep, tiptoed around to avoid waking the slimes.  Sans woke up and the silence started to bug him.  

He wandered downstairs for his first midnight snack.  He half-expected to find Papyrus in the kitchen, padding around with soft slippers pulled on over his boots, cleaning.  He wasn’t there.  Sans brought his bag of chisps to Papyrus bedroom, planning on offering him a couple.

His brother was fast asleep, his blanket pulled up to his smile.  Sans hovered over the bed.  He listened to Papyrus mutter nonsense.  It was tough for him not to talk, even in sleep.

A sick tension in Sans’ “stomach” made the chips unappetizing.  He left Papyrus’ room and tried to get back to sleep.  

Sans nodded off, but only ten minutes passed when he woke up again and checked the time.  He ate a few more chips, sitting up in bed.  He switched on the television and managed to sleep for another hour with that as background noise to cover the quiet.  

Grillby wasn’t back yet when he woke up again.  Sans put on a clean pair of socks and his slippers and took a shortcut to the bar.  

–

It was rarely a heavy crowd, down at Grillby’s.  The food was comfortable and the company was the type Sans didn’t mind seeking out.  Everyone there called out a greeting when Sans came in the door.  

Grillby looked up from the drink he was pouring, his hands continuing their work without his direct attention.  

“Someone’s here to check up on Grillbz!”  A regular, a friendly boulder monster, called out.

“Yeah, the Boss is here,” someone else said.

"you’d better be pouring everyone’s fries and frying everyone’s drinks right, grillbz, or you’re fired,” Sans said.  

“I’m always fire,” Grillby said, easily.

“Grillbz says he’s already fired,” his translator spoke up.  Close enough.

Grillby poured Sans a drink, his flames flickering with curiosity.  

“maybe i was lonely.”  Sans answered the question he didn’t ask, winking like it was a joke.   He understood Grillby’s confusion.  He usually didn’t stop by so late anymore.

“You want something?” Grillby asked, nodding towards the kitchen.

“whatever you want to make me.”  

“What about a foot taller?” Another regular called out.

“hey, now, wise guy,” Sans looked around to meet the chucklehead’s eyes.  "bend down and say that to my face.“  

The sick feeling Sans had been carting with him had dissipated with the noise and friendly atmosphere.  Grillby brought him out a plate of cheese fries and a gallon tub of ketchup.

"you really read my mind, buddy,” Sans said.  

He hung around until closing, hovering nearby while Grillby did the usual late night cleanup.  Sans counted the cash for him the third time Grillby gave him a pointed look from over by the register.  The monster who usually drove Grillby home left early since Sans was there.  

“You were lonely?” Grillby asked, as he locked up.  

Sans shrugged.  "it’s quiet now that everyone’s left."

He nodded.  "You’re always welcome here.”

Grillby didn’t seem to want to head immediately back.  They walked down the road.  It was a dry, clear, night - Grillby’s favorite kind.  

“Are you sick?” Grillby asked, blunt.

Sans started to shrug again and say he was okay, but swallowed the words.  He’d made some promises, for better or for worse.  "dunno," he said.

"Tired?”

Sans laughed.  "what kind of question is that?"

He didn’t respond.  He didn’t seem annoyed by the non-answer.  

"i guess when everyone was here, it was easy to be ok.”  

“…a distraction?”

“right.”  Maybe “ok” was  _all_  he had been, too.  Sans knew he had to be upset, if he couldn’t sleep and he kept looking for distractions.  The lack of highs or lows had been a comfort for a long time, but he wasn’t supposed to be living like that anymore.  

“Toriel said…you might have trouble after everything settled down.”  

“you two talking about me behind my back?”

Grillby nodded.

“no shame, even.”  He chuckled.  

“None.  Are you annoyed?”

“nah.”  Maybe embarrassed?  No, not even that.  

Sans took them back to the house. Papyrus was awake in the kitchen, making Soozen’s lunch.  Sans felt a dull relief to see him bustling around, looking the same as he always did.  

 

—

 

Out of dark spaces, the ones left vague and undetailed by the dream, a face took shape.  Static hissed loud enough to make Sans’ skull ache.   

“hey, pops.”  The chill in the air froze Sans in place.  "papyrus is fine.  you probably knew that."  It was tough to tell.

Hands, starkly white, reached out towards him.  There was sound almost like the voice Sans remembered, and the hands started to move.  

"[BE CAREFUL]”  

“uh.  sure.  you got any context for that?”

One of the hands almost touched Sans’ forehead.  He tried not to flinch.  The hand never touched him - his dad faded back into the dream.  Sans woke up.

The bedroom was lit up blue from the light of Sans’ eye.  He rubbed his skull.

“Sans?”  The blue disappeared, and all that was left was Grillby’s warm glow.

“yup?”

Grillby sat up and leaned over him.  He examined Sans’ face.  

“yeah?  oh.”  Sans tapped his head.  He could say it was a bad dream and spare the details, but Grillby would know he was leaving too much out and worry.  "weird dad dream."

"…weird dream?  Or…weird dad?"

"yeah.”

Grillby just nodded.

“he showed up, told me to ‘be careful,’ and hightailed it outta there.”  

“…careful of what?”

Sans shrugged.  "just look both ways before crossing the road, i guess.  drink plenty of milk."   His dad was spread through space  _and_  time, so he might be able to tell what was coming.

Grillby was quiet for a while, thinking.  He reached back to grab his glasses off the side table. "Was it a dream?”

“sure.”

“I just…had a dream, too.”

Sans sat up.  He was curious, now.

“I was here.  And it was… _dark_.”  The word made him visibly uncomfortable. “I couldn’t light anything.”

So it was unnaturally dark, or just very empty.  

“And…there was very little air.  I felt like I was suffocating.”

“sounds bad.”

“And then you hit me in the face with your arm and I woke up.”

“huh.  whoops.”  Sans looked away.  "well, just 'cause it was a dream doesn’t mean he wasn’t here."

"So……that  _was_  him?”

“probably.”

Grillby lay back.  He tried to take it in.  "I met your dad?"  He glanced down at himself.  "And…I wasn’t wearing a shirt?”  His sudden distress made his flames wave around like there was a strong wind.

“guess not.”  What Grillby said sunk in and Sans couldn’t take it.  "wait.  what?"  He started to laugh, almost helplessly.  "what?”  Of all the parts of what had happened, that was the one that really bothered him?

“It’s embarrassing,” Grillby said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Sans had to press his face against Grillby’s shoulder to stop laughing.  "love you."

"Thank you.”  He sounded insulted.  "Anyway.  It seems like he wants to watch out for you, but….he could have picked a better time."

"don’t think he gets that much say,” Sans said.

“Oh.”  He sighed.  “………still.”

Sans rolled onto his back.  "you sound really sure about pops trying to help me out."

"You said he tried to be a good father.  But he has trouble communicating, now.  Why would he suddenly want to hurt you?”

“yeah.  but what happened to him - it’s gotta change a guy.”  

“Do you think he wants to scare you?”

“i hope not.”  He wanted to think well of the old man, but maybe so much it was obscuring his judgment.  Or maybe he was being so wary, he couldn’t even let himself trust someone he should’ve known wouldn’t hurt him.

“Still…'be careful’ and nothing else…is too vague.”  

“if he can’t give me details about my future, he should’ve just, i dunno, spoiled me for an upcoming movie.  at least that’d be funny.”

“…'be careful?’  I could have told you that.”

“hey.  quick tip.  don’t grouse about your in-law when he might be listening,” Sans said.

“It’s rude to listen in on other people’s conversations,” Grillby said.

“you tell 'im, i guess.”

Grillby had to get up and put a shirt on before he could try to go back to sleep.  Sans almost hoped he would have another strange dream that would explain things, but the rest of the night was like any other.  


	8. Chapter 8

The layer of dust on the tarp covering Sans’ telescope reminded him it had been a few months since the last time he messed around with it.  He suddenly wondered if condensation had gotten under the plastic.  He should have put it in long term storage the last time he checked on it.  He’d just tossed something over it so he wouldn’t have to see it.

He stood completely still in front of the tarp.  Minutes ticked by.

A lightning bug flew in front of him, blinking slowly.  Sans’ hand shot out and he caught it, cupping his hand around it in the air so he didn’t crush its tiny body.  He felt its legs tickle his bones and he opened his hand.  The insect climbed up to the tip of his finger and flew off again.  He watched it go.  

Before he started to think again, he pulled the tarp off his setup.  A few more bugs - spiders and beetles, it looked like - fled.  

Sans fussed with it, trying to figure out how neglect had damaged it.  

A light turned on in the house behind him, and the back door opened.

“Sans?”  Soozen slid out onto the porch.  She was in her pajamas, oozing onto floor in a slow, sleepy way.  

“hey, sooz.”  Sans peered through the eyepiece on his telescope.  All the metal was rusting and he was pretty sure insects had gotten inside, but the lenses didn’t seem damaged.  It was kind of tough to tell, though, since it seemed to be completely stuck in place, now.

“There’s nothing that way,” she said.  "Can I look?"

"eh, if you want to be a huge nerd,” Sans said.  

“That means  _you’re_  a huge nerd, though,” she said.  She yawned.

“nope.  i’m not a huge nerd. i’m the  _head_  nerd in this house.  don’t forget it, kid.” 

She laughed.  

“just in the house, though. don’t tell your hero i said it, either.”  If Undyne found out someone was claiming to be the head nerd, she’d be force to defend her wife.  "she’d kick my butt."

Soozen slid over next to him.  He let her look through the eyepiece at the tree it was still aimed it. "Boring.”

“uh.  aren’t you grounded, by the way?”  Sans asked.

“No,” she lied.

“should you be out here?” Before she could answer, he continued.  "wait.  i guess you can’t be grounded in the house.  you have a better shot at that outside."

"If I was inside, I’d be floored!” she said, laughing.

“just like i’m floored by that great joke,” Sans said.  He didn’t care that she was outside.  

She giggled and relaxed.  She knew he wasn’t going to make her go back in.  "What’re you doing?"  she asked.

"not much.  it’ll be too much work to fix this.”  He already had a really great telescope he’d gotten from Grillby and a couple other ok ones.  

Sans sat down on a plastic patio chair and tried to get comfortable in it.   _Someone_  - and he wasn’t going to name names - must’ve burned a hole in this particular one.  He vaguely remembered dumping kerosene down the back of  _someone’s_  shirt, and maybe surprising them a tiny bit.  The other chairs scattered around were in just as bad shape, in different ways.

“But you built the whole thing, right?  How’s fixing it more work?”  Kids her age were smartasses.  

“it’s less fun,” Sans said.  "anyway."  He stretched.  He decided to change the subject from his own uncomfortable subject to hers.  "i bet they really had it coming.”

“I don’t want to talk about that!” she said, drooping down until she was almost a puddle.  

“ok.”  He shrugged.

“But she really did!  It’s not fair!”  

“the other kid started it?”

“Yes!”  She somehow got even flatter.  "No!  But she’d been mean for a really long time."

"you know bro doesn’t care about friendly duels, or little fights.”  He kept his tone mild. “but he heard you two really tried to hurt each other.”

“It doesn’t matter!”  She splurched back into shape, angry.  "I didn’t hurt anyone!"

Soozen hadn’t won.  Poor kid.  Had to be a blow to her dignity, considering how much she idolized Undyne.  

"sure, sure,” he said, holding up his hands.  "it’s unfair, right."  

"I shouldn’t be grounded when I can’t even hit anyone anyway!  I’m too slow!”  

Well, she’d hit at least once.  Sans had heard that much.  It was true that slimes weren’t monsters designed for speed, though.  "sorry, kiddo."

She splattered some slime onto the porch and let out a loud sigh.  "I don’t even care that I’m grounded.  I just…why did I have to lose?”

“everyone’s gotta lose a few,” Sans said.  

She sloshed into a lawn chair and hunched up.  Apparently his “oh well” reaction wasn’t helping much.   “Win a few, lose a few!  Who cares?”  

“look, this kid wasn’t some tv show villain.  she’s just some brat.”

“If I can’t fight bullies, then how can I fight really bad people?” she asked.  "I hate being weak and slow."

"i dunno.  it’s not so bad being weak, once you get used to it,” Sans said.  

Her little orb eyes, floating in slime, directed themselves towards him.  "At least I could win against you."

"yeah.”  She had way more HP than he had.  "look, kid, if you want to get better, it doesn’t just happen.  bro trained for a long time.  i sit on my butt, so a baby could knock me out."

"I want to fight like Undyne.” she said.  

“sure.  so did papyrus, but he still uses bone and blue attacks.  not spears.  you gotta fight like yourself to get as good as she is, right?”

“What does that  _mean_?” She crossed her nub arms.  "There aren’t any slimes around to train me."

"hm.  what about that lady who watches your sib sometimes?”

“She thinks that…ugh!  She thinks that being violent ‘betrays the values that led us all to freedom!’”

“heh.  you gotta admire that, right?”

“It wouldn’t matter if my  _mom_  was here to teach me,” she said, and then went still.  She hadn’t meant to bring up her mother.  

“tough lady, your mom?”

“Not tough enough.”  Ouch.  Soozen drooped in her chair, slime oozing out from underneath and hitting the porch floor.  "Sorry.  Papyrus is really great, I just…I just really wish…"

"bro is really great,” Sans agreed.  "but, hey, of course you wish stuff was different.“  He thought they were getting to what was really bugging her.  "he’s not the only one who cares about you. you’re both good kids.”  He aimed his smile at her, and winked. “but, eh, if stuff could be different, we’d all be ok with that. your parents had you guys 'cause they wanted to love you.  they should get to see you turn into cool grownups.”  He looked over his telescope again, mostly so he wasn’t looking at her.  

There were bumps here and there, but his brother was really good at this parenting stuff.  He was the best at it because he was willing to keep trying to get better when he messed up.  

Still.  The kids had lost their parents.  It wasn’t fair.  He kind of knew the feeling, and how much it could make someone obsess over going back and fixing everything. Well, maybe that was just him, but he  _did_ know the feeling.

Maybe it could make someone else obsess over getting strong enough to protect themselves.  Maybe it could make a kid lash out.  

“Sorry,” she repeated.

“nah.  i still wish my old man was around,” Sans said.  In a way he could talk with and be around in a normal way.  "even though i’ve made tons of cool friends since he fell down."

"I guess everyone’s lost someone,” she said, miserable.  

“yeah.  it sucks, right?”

She nodded.  

“i’d say it sucks big stinky doo doo butts,” he continued, very seriously.

“Sans!”  She giggled.  “Gross!  I’m not a little kid anymore.  You can’t cheer me up that way!”  She had brightened, considerably.

“man, even angel’s outgrowing fart jokes.  you’re both breaking my heart.”

“Well…I  _did_  figure out a way to make even louder fart noises,” she admitted. “Wanna hear?”

“god, kid, you’ve got my number.  let’s hear it.”

“Ok.  But just for you.”  She sucked air into her slime body until a huge bubble formed in the middle.  Once she’d gathered enough air, she pushed it out again.   _PBHTHTHTHT_!

“i’m getting tears in my eye sockets,” Sans said.  "kid.  you’re a real winner."

"No I’m  _not_ , but thanks,” she said, slumping.

Oh, right.  He’d kind of hoped he’d distracted her.  "look.  what kind of monster were you up against?  something with eyes?"

"Yeah?  Some jerk dog.”

“if paps asks, i never said this, but…ok.”  He sighed.  This was a bad idea.  "i guess that  _was_  a really great fart noise."  He had to repay that  _somehow_.  "so you’re slow.  so what?  you got one hit in, right?  you just have to make it count, and you’re golden.  dog monsters see better with their noses, but the eyes are pretty vulnerable and it’ll make their nose run.  they can’t sense you to hit you and they’re distracted 'cause it hurts.”  He shrugged.  "work with what you got, kid.  you got acid slime to throw around?  practice your aim.  maybe you can train and get a little faster, but, eh.  if you can’t jump, climb a wall and fall down on 'em.  if your hp is low, figure out how to get them to miss you.“

"I’ve never seen you fight anyone,” she said.

“hey.  what’s the easiest way to get monsters to miss me?  never let them throw a punch in the first place.  i’m too lazy to fight.”

“I guess practicing my aim is something I can do on my own,” she said, doubtful.

“ask bro to train you.  he’ll cry.  it’ll be nice.  and he’s actually pretty good at it.”

“He beat up that human,” she agreed.  

“yeah.”  He still didn’t like to think about that.  

“He’ll probably turn me down, though, since I’m in trouble.”

“heh.  papyrus?  nah, he’ll want to make sure you fight responsibly.”

“If you say so.”  She climbed down out of her chair.  "Hey, Sans?  You won’t tell Papyrus I came out here, right?"

"nah.”

“Sans?  You’re ok.”

“gross.  don’t get  _too_  mushy, kiddo.”

She laughed.  "I can’t help it!"

He chuckled.  She slid over to him and he got up off his chair.  She gave him a brief, damp hug and went back inside the house.  Sans watched her go, until she switched off the light inside and disappeared from view.

There wasn’t much he could do for her, other than make immature jokes to get her to laugh and give her some cheap fighting advice.  Right?

Losing her parents at such a young age had done a number on Soozen.  She was doing better, but it was going to mess with her in one way or another for the rest of her life.  Even if she stopped being sad about it, her personality was built up out of what happened.  That was how it was for everyone, Sans figured, but with her… _just_  with her and her sibling, he thought maybe there was something he could do.  Just for them, there might be a real permanent fix.

All he needed was a place, date, and time, and a few simple instructions.  He would make it so that if they all got yanked back underground, the kids erased from existence like all the other kids born after the barrier fell, something good would come of it.  

It wouldn’t be hard to leave himself a note.  

He shook his head.  Bad idea.  He didn’t like the idea of giving some other Sans that responsibility. And, hey, there were lots of other kids with dead parents who he could help.  What made these two more important than them?

Well, because he cared about these two in particular.  

He tossed the tarp back over his telescope and went back inside. 


	9. Chapter 9

“SANS!  THE CHILDREN ARE HALFWAY THROUGH ABSORBING THEIR DINNER.  IF YOU DO NOT HURRY, THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT!”

“right there, bro,” Sans called back.  Another couple minutes passed and he made himself pry his tailbone out of his desk chair.  

“SANS, YOU – ”  

Sans appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“–YOU ALMOST MISSED DINNER COMPLETELY!”  

Sans noticed that some food had been set aside for him, despite his brother’s threats.  They were all too good to him.  

“Hey,” Soozen said.  She was concentrating on absorbing her dinner.

Angel burbled the noise they made whenever Sans showed up.  Sans thought he wouldn’t have minded if his real name had been “Brbleblop” from the start.  

“hey,” Sans said.

Soozen giggled and he realized her greeting had been her making fun of him.  

“HEY,” Papyrus said.  

“Blbl,” Angel said.  

“a bunch of wise guys,” Sans said.

“YES, I AM VERY WISE, THANK YOU.”  Papyrus nodded.  "MY WISDOM IS COMPELLING ME TO REPEAT THAT YOU SHOULD SIT DOWN AND EAT WITH US.“  

"always in a rush.  slow down and smell the roses, papyrus.”

“NO ONE IN THIS ROOM HAS A NOSE.”  

Sans ambled over.  He wasn’t feeling much like company, but everyone else was almost done.  

“Nuhuh,” Soozen said. She shaped a nose on her face at a random point below her eyes.  It slowly melted.  

“nice,” Sans said. “lucky.”  He got into his chair and started tucking into dinner.  "i wish i was cool like you.“  When he looked up from his plate, he was wearing a pair of novelty glasses with a nose attached.  

Angel noticed first and bubbled with laughter.  

"NEW HOUSE RULE!  NO NOSES AT THE DINNER TABLE!”  

“who’ll break that to tori next time she visits?”

“SHE IS VERY POLITE.  I AM SURE SHE WILL SET HERS DOWN BEFORE SHE EATS WITH US,” Papyrus said.  It was tough to tell if he was joking, sometimes.  

“You heard Papyrus,” Soozen said.  She reached out with a nub and poked Angel in the face. “Got your nose!”  She shaped her nub hand so the end looked like the nose on Sans’ glasses.  

Angel tried to copy her joke, but couldn’t get the shape right.

Even with the distractions, dinner was over a few minutes after Sans got there.  He finished up while Papyrus washed the dishes loudly behind him.  Soozen and Angel left to do homework.  

“I KNOW YOU ENJOY MY COOKING, BUT IF THERE IS SOMETHING YOU WOULD PREFER, YOU SHOULD TELL ME,” Papyrus said.  

“what?  i love this stuff,” Sans said.  He wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but it genuinely tasted good.  It was some kind of goop the kids had an easy time digesting.  Angel wasn’t supposed to absorb anything hard after lunch.  

“THEN WHY AREN’T YOU EATING DINNER WITH US?”  Papyrus asked.  "AND ALSO…WHY HAVE YOU STOPPED GOING WITH ME TO THE GROCERY STORE, LIKE YOU USED TO?  OR TAKING GRILLBY OUT WHEN HE HAS TIME OFF?  YOU THINK YOU ARE BEING VERY SLY AND SNEAKY BY ACTING NORMAL –"  He paused and reconsidered his words ”–‘NORMAL,’“ he corrected, with added finger quotes, "WHEN YOU ARE ACTUALLY WITH US.  BUT YOU CANNOT PULL ONE OVER ON YOUR WORLD-WISE BROTHER PAPYRUS.”  

“uh…”  Sans had no idea what to say to that.  He just wanted to finish eating and go.  

“THE NEXT THING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH IS GOING TO BE A LIE,” Papyrus continued, in a conversational tone.  

“i must be avoiding you 'cause i hate hanging out with you,” Sans said.  

Papyrus spun around and waved his dish cloth in Sans’ face.  "I KNOW THAT WAS A LIE, BUT THAT IS WHAT THE CHILDREN ARE STARTING TO BELIEVE!  SOOZEN ASKED ME JUST YESTERDAY IF YOU WERE ANGRY WITH HER."

Whoops.  He hadn’t thought he’d been acting that weird.  He guessed he hadn’t really hung out with her one on one since she snuck out to visit him while she was grounded.  "sorry.  i’m not mad at anyone.”

Papyrus stomped his foot and threw the towel at Sans’ face.  It hit and fell onto the floor.  He took a deep, calming breath.  "FINE!  I ALREADY EXPLAINED TO HER THAT YOU ARE NOT ANGRY.  PERHAPS YOU COULD EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT  _IS_  THE MATTER?"

Sans was quiet.  

"YOU CAN’T PRETEND YOU ARE OK AND EXPECT TO FOOL ME ANYMORE, SANS.  AND I AM NOT GOING TO PRETEND I DON’T KNOW SOMETHING IS WRONG.”

“yeah,” Sans said.

Papyrus went over and knelt on the floor next to Sans’ chair.  He picked up the towel there, but didn’t stand again.  He stared up at Sans.  "WHAT IS IT?  I AM FINE.  GRILLBY IS IN BETTER HEALTH THAN BEFORE HIS ILLNESS.  EVERYONE ELSE IS FINE.  CAN YOU AT LEAST ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN WHAT IS WRONG TO ME?"  He grabbed Sans’ arm.  "PLEASE?”

Sans closed his eyes.  He couldn’t stand to look at the worry in his brother’s eye sockets.  "i dunno, really."

"IF YOU FEEL BAD ALL THE TIME FOR NO REASON, THEN YOU SHOULD SEE A DOCTOR,” Papyrus said.  

Sans rested his skull on the back of his chair.  "i dunno.  maybe.  don’t want to talk about this."  But he didn’t want to just get up and go with his brother so worried about him.

"I KNOW.”

“maybe it was you getting hurt…”  He trailed off.  "…or maybe not.  maybe it’s cause dad keeps stopping by lately.  or maybe this is from all the way back when grillby got sick."  Or maybe it was because he kept thinking about the kids, and something happening to them.  "or what about when frisk went off after some violent nutcase by themself, like there was no one else who could’ve done that.”  And then Undyne and Tori had run after them.  Things could have gone really badly.  

“YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT US.  SANS, CAN YOU LOOK AT ME FOR A SECOND?”

“nope.”  If the guy wanted honesty, there it was.

“WELL, FINE.  LISTEN CAREFULLY TO THE SINCERITY IN MY VOICE, THEN.”  

“k.”

“IT HURTS SO MUCH BECAUSE YOU LOVE US.”

“yeah.”  

“YOU ARE NOT GOING TO STOP LOVING US OR FEELING THINGS IF YOU DON’T SPEND TIME WITH US.”

“i’ll just regret it later.”

“CORRECT.”  He heard Papyrus stand up.  "BUT, IF BEING BY YOURSELF HELPS RIGHT NOW, THEN I WILL…TRY NOT TO PUSH YOU."

"thanks.”  He sighed.  “hey.  you’re smart, bro.  answer this one for me.  i get that i’m not being honest, and that’s bad and stuff.  so should i just let the kids know i don’t like being around them right now because it makes me feel bad?”  

“SANS…”

“that seems kind of mean.”

“I TOLD SOOZEN THAT YOU ARE SICK SOMETIMES AND YOU DO NOT LIKE PEOPLE TO KNOW YOU ARE FEELING BAD.  AND THAT IF YOU ARE ACTING DISTANT, IT IS BECAUSE YOU DO NOT WANT TO HURT HER FEELINGS.”  

“ok.”

“SHE MOSTLY REQUESTED DETAILS ABOUT YOUR ILLNESS.”  He sighed and his hands dropped onto Sans’ shoulders.  "I AM HERE FOR YOU.  WE ALL ARE.  WHEN YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU NEED, TELL US."

There was an ache right in the center of Sans’ ribcage.  "got it.”  He opened his eyes and looked down before he could take in his brother’s expression.

“OH.  AND I SHOULD PROBABLY APOLOGIZE FOR THROWING THE DISH TOWEL AT YOU.  THAT IS AT THE VERY LEAST MODELING POOR SIBLING BEHAVIOR.”  There was zero regret in his voice.

Sans snorted.  "dish-es something i can’t forgive."

"I SEE.  THEN I WON’T BOTHER APOLOGIZING!”

Sans looked up, and Papyrus was staring at him with the sort of intensity he usually reserved for a particularly complicated puzzle.  Sans shook Papyrus’ hands off of him, and Papyrus let them drop, hurt flashing across his face.  

Sans got down from his chair and started to the living room.  "c'mon," he said.

"THE DISHES…”  Papyrus sighed again.  He went with him.  

Sans settled on the couch.  It was just more comfortable in there, if Papyrus was going to keep talking. There was a blanket he could use to cover his head.  

“DID YOU WANT TO PUT SOMETHING ON?”  

“yeah.  something the kids’ll like.”  They’d be done with their homework soon.

“OH!  I KNOW JUST THE THING.”

Papyrus tracked down Mettaton’s new cartoon series.  He and his band fought bad guys, or, something like that.  It was kind of tough to tell what was going on.  Mettaton spent most of the show transforming or putting on new outfits.  

Angel loved it.  If they weren’t careful after they watched a new episode, the kid would grab the glitter out of wherever Papyrus hid it and eat it all.  Mettaton inspired them.  

The kids weren’t there yet, but Papyrus started the show anyway.  He loved it, too.  

Sans stared at the bright colors flickering across the screen.  It was easier to talk when there was something else going on in the background. “i guess this has been going on longer than normal.”  It hadn’t gotten bad until Papyrus was hurt, but that was months ago, now.  Tori had been right. He took it well at the time and paid for it later.  

“IT IS DIFFICULT TO TELL HOW LONG, OUTSIDE YOUR HEAD.”  

“in here, too,” Sans said.  "i dunno."

Papyrus patted his arm and Sans gave up and leaned against him.  He closed his eyes and listened to Mettaton try to flirt his way out of his enemy band’s secret under-stage prison.  The scene changed and he heard Napstablook, or Napstablook’s voice actor, start to talk.

_[”……should I give in….?  oh…..no……….we have to save him, but…….he won’t forgive us….oh no…“_

_Shyren hummed in distress._

_"There’s no good choice here,” Burgerpants said.  "You just have to pick one.  I don’t care.  The show’s ruined one way or the other."_

_Shyren hummed._

_"You think we should trust him…and wait?”_

_“So our options are: give in to the ransom demands and get him back right after the show, don’t give in and don’t get him back, or wait and see.”_

_“or………………………….”_

_Shyren started to sing._

_“Not this again!  You really think you can rescue him yourselves?”_

_“maybe not…but…”_

_“I guess it’s the only way the show goes on in time.”  ]_

The screen burst with color as Napstablook and Shyren transformed.  

Sans was pretty sure the choice they made would turn out to be the right one, since it was a show for kids.

Angel came out of their bedroom.  As soon as they spotted what was on, they shot over as fast as a slime could travel and sat on the floor in front of the television.

“Ugh, this  _kid’s_  show?” Soozen asked, when she came out of her own room.  

Angel shushed her.  

She climbed up on the couch next to Sans.

_[“Darling, I’m so proud of you!  I admit, I am a little sad, though.  Maybe you don’t need me after all.”_

_Shyren hummed._

_“You say it was_ for _me, sweetheart?  Oh…”  Mettaton’s tears were mostly glitter._

_“I’m just…so happy you’re ok……”  Tears started to fill up the screen._

_“My set!  Doesn’t anyone else care that you’re going on in two minutes?”  Burgerpants sounded resigned._

_“Oh, shut up, darling!” Mettaton said, chuckling.  "Give me a ghost hug, Blooky, and let’s get ready!  We can’t disappoint our audience!"_

_The screen filled with color again.]_

"Can we watch something else, now?”  Soozen asked.

Angel protested.

“ONE MORE, AND THEN YOU CAN PICK SOMETHING,” Papyrus told her.

“Is Sans sleeping?”  She poked Sans’ face.  He snored.

“NO.  BUT HE IS VERY TIRED.”

“Ok.”  She leaned against Sans’ arm.  

Angel backed up until they bumped against his feet.

“Good night, Sans,” Soozen said.

“night, kid,” he mumbled. “both of you.”

The theme song started playing, and everyone’s attention turned back to the TV.  


	10. Chapter 10

Sans went directly back to his desk after Papyrus put the kids to bed.  

He was restless.  Anyone who knew him would say that wasn’t like him at all.  He was filled to the brim with rest at all times, regardless of circumstances.  

Sans played a few games on his phone and tried to keep from thinking about his conversation with his brother.  He considered heading over to Grillby’s, but he couldn’t keep Papyrus’ voice down.  Not even in his own skull.  

Avoiding action wasn’t helping.  He couldn’t even pretend he was okay anymore.  The kids could tell something was up, too, just like he figured would eventually happen.

He wished knowing bad things were going to happen had ever in his life helped him prevent them.  Trying had always just made it worse.  Things still went to hell when he did nothing, but at least he got to eat some greasy ‘burgs and have some bad laughs with his friends instead of just working himself down to the bone.  

But, he had to do  _something_  now.  He didn’t want to, and it wasn’t going to help, but he was hurting his family being down in the dumps all the time.  Nothing wasn’t working and talking it out just rubbed it in how much he was hurting everyone.

Sans didn’t have a lot of “ACT” options available.  He rolled his desk chair over to his computer and looked up what he’d been putting off looking up.  All he really needed was a date, time, and the basic circumstances, and some other Sans could do something nice for some kids he wouldn’t know.  

He printed out the accident report and scrawled a note to himself on the back.  He double-checked that his handwriting was legible enough that he could read it after he’d forgotten what he wrote.  That had gotten him in trouble in the past.  He folded up the paper and stuck it in his inventory.

Sans rolled his chair over to the door and got up.  It was way too early for Grillby to be getting back, and he wasn’t looking forward to hanging out alone in bed.  

Papyrus was wide awake in his own bedroom, phone pressed to the side of his skull.  Sans was surprised he hadn’t developed a rectangular dent there over the years.

“papyrus,” Sans said. “what do you call a tired skeleton?”  

“I DON’T KNOW, SANS!  A LAZY BONES?”  He sighed.  

“the grim sleeper,” Sans said, snickering.  "i like yours though, too.“

"I DON’T LIKE YOURS!  SKELETONS SHOULDN’T BE GRIM.  THEY SHOULD BE SMILING AND CHEERFUL!  LIKE PAPYRUS!”  He considered.  "…AT LEAST THAT ONE WAS A LITTLE DIFFERENT THAN NORMAL.  THANK YOU FOR THAT, SANS."

"no prob.  you want a story?”

“WELL…”  He settled the phone on his shoulder, so he was holding it hands-free.  "UNDYNE SAYS THAT SHE WANTS TO HEAR SOMETHING THAT WILL BLOW HER SOCKS OFF, BUT I HAVE NEVER SEEN HER WEARING THOSE."  He paused.  Undyne was berating him loudly on the other end of the line.  "YOU’RE RIGHT.  IT IS RUDE TO SPECULATE ABOUT UNDERCLOTHES.”  

“i heard she wears six bras under her helmet,” Sans said.

“I AM NOT REPEATING THAT FOR HER.”  

On the other end, Sans heard Undyne shout.  "Whatever it was, say it so I can hear it, coward!"

Papyrus held the phone away from his head.  

"And no shit I wear socks!  Otherwise I’d take off my boots and the stench would knock out everyone in the county!  Hey, Papyrus, that gives me a puzzle idea.  What if you set up a bunch of fans and my old boots and–”

“NO!  I AM GOING TO HANG UP!”

“Wait!!!  Put me on speaker.  I want to hear the story!”

Sans shrugged.  "ok."

They set Papyrus’ phone on the nightstand.

Undyne’s voice came in loud and clear.  "Great.  Let it rip!”

“DON’T GIVE MY BROTHER ANY IDEAS,” Papyrus said.  "READ THE STORY IN A NORMAL WAY, SANS, WITHOUT RIPPING ANYTHING.  AND WITH THE VOICES!"

"all right, all right.”  He picked a book with a lot of narration and very little opportunity to do voices, and did some anyway.  Undyne heckled him the entire time, but in a friendly way.  

Papyrus didn’t fall asleep, and he went right back to his conversation with Undyne.  Sans still liked the ritual of it.  He closed Papyrus’ bedroom door behind him.

He checked on Soozen, next.  She was completely out, curled around the same damp rag of a stuffed animal she’d had since she won it in a carnival game years back.   Sans thought she was starting to stow it under her bed during the day, so it’d be less obvious she was still sleeping with it.  No one cared, but she was at  _that age_.  

He closed the door again, as quiet as he could.  He didn’t want to wake her up, even if he wanted to apologize for making her get the wrong idea about his bad mood.

Angel was sitting up in their bed, playing with a few toys scattered around on top of the blanket and a flashlight.  They looked up and greeted him, sounding relieved that it was Sans and not Papyrus or Grillby.  Sans never cared when the kids stayed up too late.  

“bedtime’s getting pretty late for you,” Sans said.  He sat down on the edge of Angel’s bed.  

Angel held out one of their toys and Sans took it.

“thanks.”

They signed that they felt a little sick, and they couldn’t sleep.

“that’s not cool.”

They admitted that they had tried to eat one of their action figures.  Welp.  That explained why they hadn’t gone to Papyrus when they started feeling sick.

“well, it’ll work itself out, right?”  

They nodded.

“i got a story for you.  right after we all got to the surface, we moved into a place that used to belong to some humans.  papyrus hadn’t spent much time around their type of bathroom, and somehow he’d gotten the idea that toilets were wet garbage cans.”

Angel pulled the flashlight out of their shoulder and set it on the bed.  They were interested.  

“kid, you don’t even want to hear about the kind of stuff the plumber pulled out when we finally called one in.  empty toothpaste tubes, shaving cream bottles – that kind of thing.  see, bro’s really great, but don’t take him too seriously when he gets on your case for eating the wrong stuff.  he’s had some mess ups in his time.”  

They nodded and pointed at the action figure they had given Sans.

Sans played with them for a few minutes.  He couldn’t figure out what the game was, exactly, but Angel didn’t mind when he started making stuff up.

Papyrus had done a lot for them. The kid could speak slime, and was learning monster sign language, ASL, and monster sign language for monsters who didn’t have hands.  They had the same voice app on their phone that Grillby did, and they had been taught how to use it.  On top of all that, Papyrus made sure they always had a pad of paper and several pencils on them, just in case.  

Papyrus felt guilty about raising them so far away from someplace where a lot of slimes lived.  He’d deliberately made friends with the one slime family in town just so that Angel could spend time with them.  It was kind of amazing how much the kid had learned and taken in, but Sans knew one thing that would’ve made things easier for Angel.  

“see you later, kiddo,” Sans said.  He set the action figure on the pillow next to Angel’s head and stood up.  

They burbled a good night.  

Sans closed the door behind him and started back to his bedroom.  Grillby still wouldn’t be back, and he kind of wanted to tell him good night, too.  That chance was hours away, though, unless he went to hassle him at the bar.  Nah.  

Sans decided to go.  He stepped through the door, but it wasn’t his bedroom or the bar on the other side.  He was in a dusty lab, deep underground.  Sweat trickled down his skull from the strain of the shortcut.  

It barely took a minute to stash his note to himself someplace where he’d find it again.  He felt kind of dumb avoiding bringing it underground for so long.  He just needed to head back up and relish a job well done.  

Instead, he looked through the pictures he kept down there and read a few of his old notes.  He checked the time and realized that he’d spent more time fussing around down there than he’d meant to, and Grillby would be back.  Well, no big deal.  He’d just go back right then.

He carefully put his notes away and went to the door.  He wasn’t too tired for one more shortcut. Grillby would have another dinner for him when he got home, and then he’d sleep.  

Sans stepped through the door.  He was still in Snowdin.  Maybe he didn’t want to go back quite yet.  

He looked around the empty town. It was so dark he could barely see.  Lingering magic energy and a few glowing mushrooms let him make out the battered shapes of buildings he’d once passed by every day.  

Sans went into the main part of the house and climbed the stairs up to his bedroom.  It was kind of funny seeing the inside.  He’d always kept it so messy, but now everything was trashed.  His room was barely any different.  

Dust, the regular kind, had settled over every surface.  Sans walked over and kicked the side of his mattress.  Dust flew everywhere - into his eye sockets and all over his clothes.  He scrubbed at his face with his hands and laughed.   Dust flew away from him, like smoke.  

He sat down on the bed, and then lay down.  It was pretty gross, but after a minute there, he started to feel comfortable.  Something settled inside him, and he closed his eyes.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END OF PART ONE


	11. Part Two - The Wall

Sans woke up coughing, confused where he was and why the bed was so cold.  He swore once when he remembered, and again when he checked the time on his phone.  It was late morning.

He had sixteen messages from Papyrus, two from Grillby, and one from Toriel.  They must’ve called her to find out if he stopped by her place.  

Sans didn’t read or listen to any of the messages.  He sent a few himself, though.

_ /sorry papyrus went out and fell asleep.  your bro’s a real bonehead, huh?/ _

_ /whoops went to clear my skull and guess i emptied it too much.  should’ve sent a message but i fell asleep.  hope you aren’t too heated, gz./ _

He went to text Tori and accidentally read what she said.  She had sent him a link to a video (probably to something hilarious, but every now and then she linked him to three hour documentaries about snails) and she added:   _ Sans, I believe your brother is looking for you.  Be a dear and contact him before he gets even more upset.  Thank you, Toriel.   _

His phone started ringing before he could type out a message for her, too.  

Papyrus looked angry in his contact photo.  Sans rejected the call.  He wasn’t awake enough to talk to anyone directly.  

He left the phone on his mattress and went downstairs.  There were only rows and rows of old spaghetti in the fridge.  They wouldn’t be bad in the way that human food went bad, but…

Sans slowly closed the fridge and walked outside.  Snow crunched underfoot.  He stopped right outside the door to stretch, then decided to loot some breakfast before he went home.  

He found a stash of old cinnamon buns in the back of the Snowdin shop. Sans had to dust off some cobwebs, but the food reminded him that he was supposed to eat when he felt low and he hadn’t in a while. Even if his HP was maxed out.  It normally wasn’t something he had to remember, since food was constantly available when he was at home.

Sans looked around the shop.  Next time he saw the old keeper he’d have to tell her he’d visited and there were a lot of her old relatives hanging around in her place.  Old  _ dust _ bunnies.  

Well, maybe that was too dark to actually tell her, but he laughed at his own joke.  

With a night’s rest and good food lining his ribcage, the trip back didn’t seem so tiring.  He walked back to the house, taking a shortcut to his room to grab his phone.  It was ringing, so he shut it off.

He opened up his bedroom door and walked through, expecting to walk through the front door of his home on the surface.  

Sans stopped in the hallway outside his old bedroom.  Sans registered the slight discoloration on the wall where there had been a picture of a bone.  The bit of energy he had built up drained out of him.  

He really  _ didn’t _ want to go back, did he?

What he was able to do was tied to what he had the will to do.  Papyrus could never kill anyone because there was no part of him that wanted to do that.  If there was any doubt there, he’d be able to.  So Sans didn’t want to go home  _ so much _ it was impossible for him to make himself do it.  

He went back into his bedroom and flopped back onto the mattress.  He could walk back to the surface, but, nah.  Maybe he could visit Tori and crash on her couch for a couple days?  He closed his eye sockets and gave it a shot.  

That didn’t work, either.  Probably because he knew that as soon as his tailbone hit Tori’s couch and Papyrus was told he was there, he’d be a few hours drive from seeing him.  

“guess i’m just boned, then,” Sans said.  He shrugged and rolled over onto his side.  Maybe he’d figure it out later.  

–

There were a few monsters still living underground, but Sans didn’t run across them.  

All the houses still standing in Snowdin had Gyftmas decorations on them, but unlit and decaying.  Most of the places had food in them, so Sans went on a tour of all the old homes.

Sans spent long stretches of time in his basement lab, paging through notes and looking at pictures.  He was searching for something, and he was sure he wasn’t going to find it there, but he kept at it anyway.  His tours of the underground left him tired and unsettled. He slept in the lab, where everything looked like he expected it to. He kept his phone turned off.

The door to the old ruins had been left wide open.  Toriel’s home was cold and empty, and it took a whole box of matches for him to inexpertly start a fire in her fireplace.  Once he had that going, it was almost cozy in there.  Better than his own place.  Sans spent a couple nights napping in her arm chair, until the old children’s things she hadn’t taken with her started to creep him out.

He found some notes in his lab with ideas he’d never had the energy to follow up on.  It didn’t matter how good the idea had been, and how detailed his notes were.  Resetting would also reset his train of thought, and he’d almost have to start from scratch.  It had stopped seeming worth the effort.  

The bridges in Waterfall were useless.  Sans skipped right to shortcuts instead of using them.  Where they were still intact, they looked rotten and about to break.  Someone had been nice and set out boats for monsters to use when they came back to visit.  

He passed by a door on the wall of a cave that he had never been able to open.  He could always see it, and he knew what it meant, but it wasn’t the kind of door that opened.  Sans stopped in front of it and said, “hey, was this what ‘be careful’ was about?”  The door stayed shut and he couldn’t hear any response.  He knocked on the wall.  "knock knock.“  He waited a beat.  "police. police who?  police let me in.”  He snickered.  

His knuckles rapped on the wall again.  "who’s there?  myth.  myth who?  myth you too.“  He laughed.  "yeah, ok. at least get you a 'burg to put that cheese on, right?”  

Sans shoved his hands in his pockets and kept going.  He hadn’t run into anyone, yet, but it would be great luck to have someone walk by just as he was talking to a wall.  People might start to talk about him behind his back.  Call him uncool.  He’d hate for people to be so confused they started believing something untrue about him.

He was losing track of time.  


	12. Chapter 12

Alphys sat on the edge of her bed, swinging her legs and fussing with her phone.  She wasn’t really paying attention to it.  

“How much do I need to bring?”  Undyne wondered.  She stuffed a couple shirts into her gym bag.  "Some food and some punching gloves.  Maybe with spikes!  Plus a net to catch that little -“ Undyne broke off, "Uh, I mean, your friend.”  

“Undyne, it’s fine.”  Alphys didn’t like that whenever Undyne went to call Sans a jerk, she stopped herself.  There was a possibility none of them had said out loud, and Undyne correcting herself made Alphys think she considered it pretty likely.  "M-maybe bring some lights?  Oh!  You can take my hat with the flashlight on it.“

"Nice! Then I don’t have to hold anything when I’m punching stuff!”

Papyrus had already tried going underground, but both ways he tried were blocked off with rubble.  Alphys had a theory.  Over the years, monsters had made small changes to the natural pathways through the Underground, and now that they were gone and their magic was no longer propping everything up, certain caves were unstable.  Undyne had volunteered to punch him through.

“You know, Undyne…”  Alphys spoke quietly.  "I might be able t-to get the elevators working for long enough.“  She jabbed at the screen on her phone.  "I’ve been thinking I should go.”

“Nah, Alphys, we’ve got it.  If he’s down there, Papyrus will haul his ungra–his brother’s bony butt back here in no time.”  

“But what if you, uh, destabilize the cave you’re in even further?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time!”  Undyne laughed.  "Seriously, Alphys, it’s fine.“

"Okay…”  Alphys stared blankly at her phone.

Undyne was trying to protect her, but Alphys wanted to help.  Sans had been in a bad state of mind when he left, and Alphys sure knew what that could be like.

When things had gone so wrong for her, Sans had known that something was up.  He’d known what scientific failure was like.  He’d given her some advice.

He’d told her to look for good food, good friends, and to find something fun to do to take her mind off the bad stuff.  She didn’t have to tell anyone.  If she couldn’t do anything about it, it wasn’t worth thinking about.   Alphys had resented that advice when she got to the surface.  

His advice hadn’t fixed anything.  Honesty and action had been what made things better - as good as they _could_ be.  His advice had held her back.

Now, though, she remembered the state of mind she’d been in right after everything had gone into the garbage, and she wondered.  Meeting Undyne had been the point where her life had actually started improving, but what had kept her around until then?  Until she was ready to move forward?

Watching anime and lying.  It was the wrong thing to do, absolutely, but she recalled clearly the anxiety that twisted her gut but that stilled and turned calm as she stared down over the edge of the trash heap waterfall.  There was an action she’d been inclined to take, back then, and not doing anything had given her the chance to draw herself back from the edge, turn around, and pick a different way to progress.

Sans’ advice had been limited, but she honestly wondered if she’d still be around if she hadn’t taken it.  

Alphys set her phone down on the bed.  "N-no.  You know what?  I’m going.  We’ll fix up the elevators and take a boat right to Snowdin. I _want_ to help.“  

"Well, I can’t argue with that passion,” Undyne said.  She punched into her bag.  "Now there’s space for your stuff, too!“

"Oh, I’m going to need _way_ more room than that,” Alphys said.

“Lucky your wife can bench press a truck,”  Undyne said.  

“I am _so_ lucky,” she agreed, laughing.  "But I’ll just use the dimensional boxes this time.“  

Alphys hopped down off the bed and started gathering the things she would need.

\--

“My child.”  Toriel stood in the doorway going into Frisk’s room. “I need to speak with you, before you leave.”

Frisk’s bed was covered in items - armor, weapons, healing items, and keys - and they seemed busy going through them, but they stopped and nodded at Toriel to continue.  

“I know that you believe that you are in some way responsible for us. And you have done a great service for monsterkind, it is true.”

Toriel folded her paws in front of her.  It would not be very long before her child decided it was time to move away and start their own life separate from hers.  They were already an adult, even if it was difficult for her to see them that way.  Time rushed onward, and Toriel felt like a rock - barely moving, but worn smooth by the unending motion around her.  

For now, though, her child lived in their home, and she could do her best to be a mother to them.

Frisk told her that Sans was their friend.

“He is an adult.  We are all adults.  He has an illness that does not go away completely.  You are not responsible for this.”

They shook their head.  Sans was their friend, still, even if they weren’t responsible.  

Toriel sighed.  "Well, so long as that is clear.  If things turn out…to not be as we all are hoping, it is not you who are at fault.“

Frisk agreed, but they did not meet her eyes.

She walked over to the bed and rested her hands on Frisk’s shoulders.  "I will pack a few things, myself.  It is always useful to bring someone who knows healing magic, no matter where you are going.”

They looked up at her and nodded.  They thanked her.

–-

The clear liquid in Grillby’s teacup gave off a powerful smell.  Papyrus had no idea if drinking rubbing alcohol in a vessel meant for soothing herb juice was a negative or neutral sign of a fire elemental’s state of mind.  

Grillby nodded hello instead of speaking.  He had not had much to say, recently.

“ARE YOU IN HERE WAITING TO GIVE ME A PROPER FAREWELL?”  Papyrus guessed.  "I APPRECIATE THE SENTIMENT, BUT I DO NOT EXPECT TO BE LONG.  AND I WILL SEND YOU AND EVERYONE MINUTE-TO-MINUTE UPDATES ON OUR PROGRESS.“

Papyrus was leaving to pick up Undyne and Alphys.  

Grillby shook his head.  He took out his phone and handed it to Papyrus.  

Papyrus found himself looking at a series of messages Grillby had exchanged with Alphys.

Alphys: _Well, I don’t mind if you go, but, um, half the bridges in Waterfall are just floating planks of wood right now.  So you’d pretty much have to take a boat across?_

Grillby: _That’s fine._

Alphys: _The other way’s even more of a mess._

Alphys: _it’s so weird?  once we locate sans i should make sure this isn’t some side effect from shutting down the core i’m still not 100% sure we used proper protocols for that_

Alphys: _oops off topic, sorry.  of course we’ll tell you as soon as we find anything!  you really can stay home and let us deal with everything._

Grillby: _I know.  I’ll still go._

Alphys: _ok…i can’t *really* say no can i considering i shouldn’t be going either!!!  lmao =^.^=_

Alphys: _OH.  that’s why you asked me, huh?_

Grillby: _Yes_.

Alphys: _so!!!!!!  see you soon, then??_

Grillby: _Yes._

"UM…”  Papyrus continued scrolling down.

“Asgore will watch the children,” Grillby said, as he took back his phone.

Papyrus was not entirely certain it was a good idea for Grillby to go with them.  "I AM IMPRESSED BY YOUR DECISIVENESS, HOWEVER THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO CONFRONT YOUR FEAR OF WATER AT THIS EXACT TIME.  AS I SAID, THERE WILL BE MINUTE-TO-MINUTE UPDATES, SO IT WILL BE LIKE YOU ARE ACTUALLY THERE ANYWAY.“

He supposed that his worry was that Grillby was going in order to assuage some unnecessary emotion like "guilt.”  There was no reason for Grillby to feel guilty!  There was no reason for anyone to feel guilty, as Papyrus had reminded himself constantly since his brother had gone missing.

Papyrus took out his phone and typed a message.

Grillby’s phone, set to its highest volume setting, went off.  Papyrus sensed mild irritation off of Grillby as he took out his phone again.

Papyrus: _LIVE UPDATE #1 - THE GREAT PAPYRUS STILL STANDS IN HIS KITCHEN.  HIS VERY GOOD FRIEND AND BROTHER-IN-LAW GRILLBY HAS JUST SAID HE IS COMING ON THIS JOURNEY, AND PAPYRUS IS TRYING TO DECIDE THE BEST WAY TO SAY HE SUPPORTS GRILLBY’S DECISION WITHOUT IMPLYING IT IS NECESSARY FOR HIM TO GO.  THE EVER-COMPETENT PAPYRUS IS ON THE CASE AND WILL DO WHATEVER IS NEEDED, NO MATTER WHAT.  BUT THERE IS PLENTY OF ROOM IN THE CAR!_

Grillby sent a short message back: _Thank you.  I’m going._

Papyrus: _LIVE UPDATE #2 - PAPYRUS IS DELIGHTED TO WELCOME GRILLBY ALONG ON THE JOURNEY!_

Papyrus held out his gloved hand.  Grillby finished his drink in one sip and let Papyrus pull him to his feet.  

—

“Good night, and be well, children.”  The door clicked shut behind Asgore.

Soozen sat up in her borrowed bed as soon as the light went out in the hall.

It was difficult to move silently, as a slime.  She slid slowly out of bed to try and keep squelching to a minimum when she touched the cold floor.

Angel burbled from the other bed.

“Shhh, go to sleep.”

They made a questioning sound.  

“I just don’t feel like sleeping yet, okay?” she hissed.  

Angel shifted around and got out of their little cot, too.  Soozen guessed they didn’t feel much like sleeping, either.  She waited a minute to see if Asgore heard them moving around and came back, but the hall outside stayed quiet.  

“Ok, look, kiddo,” she said, sliding over to them.  "There’s something I have do.  None of the grownups are telling us anything, and that isn’t fair.“  She told them, quiet, about her plan.  It would be better if someone knew, right?  Then they wouldn’t have to worry so much when they found her missing.

Angel liked her plan so much, they wanted to go, too.

"No, look, Angie, I’m almost an adult.”

They said that they were the last one to see Sans, so they _had_ to go.  She understood the words they were signing, but wasn’t sure what they meant.  

“No you don’t.  C'mon.  It’s safer here.”

Angel signed, “If I don’t go with you, I’m telling Asgore and you won’t go, either.”

“That’s _dirty_.”

“And I don’t want to be here by myself.”  Angel finished signing and went almost flat against the floor, miserable.

There were a million of Undyne’s kids there, and Asgore and Gerson to watch them, but Soozen knew what they meant.  Undyne’s kids were family, but more like cousins.  Papyrus, Grillby and Sans were _family_ family.  If she locked Angel in a closet and ran off, they’d be all by themself and they’d hear even less about what was going on without Soozen bugging everyone for answers.  

“…okay, jeez, fine, but I’m in charge.  No messing around, okay, Angel?”

She regretted agreeing when Angel took their favorite stuffed toy off their bed to bring with them, but she’d already agreed.

“All right, kid.  Let’s head out.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end of part two


	13. Part Three - Back

Sans sat leaning over a blueprint, ruler in hand.  Scattered around him were poorly drawn sketches that were lumpier versions of the drawing in front of him.  Empty chisps bags were crumpled up on the floor by his slippers, and when he idly swung his feet, they rustled.

The door opened, slamming hard against the wall.  Sans twitched and looked up just as Papyrus flew in.

Papyrus stopped abruptly as he caught sight of his brother, like he’d run straight into a wall.

Sans froze, too. Shame trickled in.  The mess of emotions on Papyrus’ face burst the dam and for a second, the guilt was drowning him.  Sans had to go. He couldn’t deal with this, not right then.

But before his need could solidify into action, Papyrus spoke.

“Sans,” he said, “Please don’t go yet.”

Sans hadn’t heard that voice from him in years.  All feeling drained out of him.  

He settled into his chair.  "time sure flies, doesn’t it, papyrus.“

And his brother was holding onto him and crushing him against his chest.  Neither of them spoke for a long time.

–

It was a little bit easier for Alphys to concentrate once the elevators were fixed and the doors opened up and let them out.  The noise from Papyrus’ incessant foot-tapping had started to feel like he was drumming directly on her head, and she couldn’t  _complain_.  Not with his brother missing.  

He was gone the second the doors were open wide enough for him to slip through, and Undyne rushed right after him.  

Grillby stepped outside and watched them run off.  A hot, foul smelling breeze cut through and it made him look like the air was pulling him after their friends.

"It’s, uh, either c-clear all the way to Snowdin, or…we’ll catch up with them soon,” Alphys said.  

Frisk said they wanted to see where the cave had collapsed.

“It might not be stable there, my dear,” Toriel said.  

“W-wouldn’t it be great if the whole Underground j-just fell right on our heads while we were d-down here?  Eheh… _god_.  Sorry.  I’m…sure that won’t happen.”

Frisk shook their head.  They didn’t think the cave collapsed where it did at random.

“This happened before Sans ran off,” Alphys said.  "Or maybe you mean, uh, someone else did it?  I don’t want to think about someone collapsing the cave on us on p-purpose!“

"I can’t imagine why anyone would, but…either way, it will be dangerous to go into those tunnels without aid,” Toriel said.  "I am aware you will do as you please, Frisk, but at least exercise some caution.  I will accompany you after we find our friend.“

Grillby was already walking ahead of them towards the entrance into Hot Land.  He wasn’t interested in the state of the cave.  

Alphys scurried after him.  She hoped they caught up with Undyne soon, but she wouldn’t bet on it.  Once past the lava glow, it started to get dark. Grillby was the main light source other than a few dimly glowing rocks until Toriel lit a fire of her own.  

Grillby had brought his own umbrella for the sections of Waterfall where it was difficult to avoid getting wet.  He slowed down and held it over Alphys and Frisk’s heads too.  Toriel pulled an entire raincoat out of her inventory and tugged it on.  

In the distance, Alphys spotted a gentle blue light.  She left the umbrella and hurried to where Undyne was standing.  They had reached one of the spots where the bridge was out entirely.

"I was thinking if he doesn’t want to take the boat, I could toss him over,” Undyne said, gesturing at Grillby.  "It’s not that far, and then it’ll be over in a few seconds instead of drawing it out!“

Grillby shrank back until he was behind Toriel.  ”…no thank you.“  

"Don’t worry! It’s actually safer, if you think about it,” Undyne said, grinning.  Alphys could tell it was one of her reassuring smiles, but all the fangs made it difficult to tell she wasn’t issuing a threat.

Frisk asked where Papyrus was.

“Oh, he’s in Snowdin.  I ran back to meet with you slowpokes ‘cause I thought maybe you were having trouble getting across.”

“The regular boats will be fine, I am sure,” Toriel said.  "I remember navigating this place long before we built our bridges and put in lights and made it our own.  It has not reached that point, but I do not suppose it will be long until nature returns to take these caverns back completely.“  

"C'mon, suck it up!  It’s perfectly safe, and way faster.  I’ll demonstrate.  C'mon Alphys.”

“Wh-wh-what?” Alphys glanced back at Toriel, but the hiding space behind her was already taken.

Now Undyne’s reassuring grin was aimed at her.  "You trust me, right?“

"Of course I do!  But, um, I ate all that human food in the car…”

“And you’ll be right by the river if you puke it out!  Perfect!”  Undyne came over and lifted her up.

It was easy to trust Undyne, with her strong arms around her.  "O…okay….I guess.“

The words were barely out of her mouth when Alphys was in mid-air.  

She heard, behind her, already a good distance away, "Oh!  I forgot!  Roll when you hit the ground!”

Everyone else took the boat.  Alphys sat on the edge of the water, splashing her feet in the water as she waited.  She’d lost both shoes on the way over, but at least the cold water felt nice on her various scratches and growing bruises.  

Her phone went off.

Papyrus:  _LIVE UPDATE # 546: AS I DEDUCED, SANS WAS AT OUR OLD HOME!_ _AND FINE_ _!_ _…ISH_ _?_ _ANYWAY THE HOUSE I AM TALKING ABOUT IS_ _THE ONE_ _MY BROTHER AND I LIVED_ _AT IN SNOWDIN_ _._ _IT IS DIFFICULT TO MISS - BECAUSE I AM STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT_ _, AND I AM IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS._ _I WILL WAVE WHEN I SEE YOU!_ _IF YOU NEED FURTHER DIRECTIONS, GO AHEAD AND CALL.  IF YOU YELL LOUD ENOUGH I WILL BE ABLE TO_ _USE MY FAMED TRACKING SKILLS TO FIND_ _YOU AND_ _LEAD_ _YOU HERE IN NO TIME AT ALL._

From the boat, Undyne yelled into her phone: “Everyone knows your house, you goofball!"  

Sans was fine.  The… _ish_ …part was…something they would deal with later.  So long as he was alive, they had time to try to help him.  

Frisk hit the ground next to her, rolling and then standing in one smooth motion.  They stood up and looked at her, their expression one of clear-headed determination.  

"Sweet landing!”  Undyne also landed, both feet flat on the ground, a short distance away.  She looked Alphys over.  "Oh, fuck - frick - “she paused and remembered there were no children there, ”- _fuck_ , I didn’t tell you to roll fast enough, did I?“

"Nope!” Alphys laughed.  "You sure didn’t!  I probably wouldn’t have done it right, anyway.“  

Toriel drew the boat in and Undyne held it steady while she climbed out. Undyne lifted the boat onto the dry ground and Grillby carefully stepped out, hand tightly gripping Frisk’s shoulder.  Grillby’s flames were more red than normal, and he seemed small.

"I know I am here,” Toriel said, “But you should not go out of your way to injure yourselves.”  She bristled a bit as she knelt down to heal Alphys’ scratches.

“It was pretty exciting, though,” Alphys admitted.  

“Sorry, though, babe,” Undyne said.

“It wasn’t as bad as…uh…”

“Ha!” Undyne grinned.  "Our second anniversary night.“

"I had bruises in places I didn’t know I had!”  Alphys laughed, too.  

“A _hem_.” Toriel stood up straight and brushed off her skirt.  

“But, you know…I complained, but, uh…we wouldn’t have won if you had waited until I dropped the ball before you kicked it across the goal. And I really wanted to win!"  

"Atta girl!”  Undyne gave Alphys an affectionate whap on the shoulder.

Everyone’s mood had brightened, and Alphys knew it was because of Papyrus’ message.  Even Grillby seemed to cheer up as they put some distance between themselves and the boat.

“I’m, um,  _sure_  Sans will be fine, or, uh, even  _more_  fine pretty soon,” Alphys said.  

Grillby nodded.  "………we’ll bring him home.“  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New plan! Not posting part 3 until the entire story is finished has given me a mental block about posting _anything_ on Ao3, so I've decided to post what I have!


	14. Chapter 14

The air started to get cold and Alphys rubbed her arms.  The chilled air made her sluggish and tired, but at least with a fire monster nearby, it wouldn’t get too bad.  

Papyrus was waiting outside his house.  His smile brightened when he saw them, but he kept fidgeting like he was nervous.  

“So, what’s up?”  Undyne asked.  "We’re grabbing his tailbone and hauling him out of this pit, right?“

"UM. THAT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA, UNDYNE, BUT HE SAID HE WANTS TO FINISH SOMETHING BEFORE HE GOES.”

Undyne groaned.  "Maybe you can distract him, and I’ll grab him before he runs off again.“

"I AM NOT SURE THAT IS THE BEST IDEA?”

–

While they were discussing their strategy, Toriel tapped Frisk on their shoulder.  "My child.  Are you well?“  They had seemed distracted since they had heard that Sans had been found.

Had they lost interest in their mission, already?  Sans was alive, but they still needed to bring him back to the surface.  

Frisk glanced around while the rest of them spoke.  Toriel repeated their name, and they suddenly noticed they were being addressed.  They said they were well.  Relieved.

Toriel nodded.  "I did not quite realize how much I feared I was going to lose a dear friend until I knew he was still with us.”  She would tell Sans that he had scared her “down to (her) bones.” That would surely give him a set up he could work with, even in his weakened state.  

Papyrus knocked loudly at the door to his old home’s basement.  Alphys stood closest to him, nervously fiddling with hem of her sweater.

“He can’t fix it,” Alphys said.  "Maybe he’s so, umm, turned around?  He thinks he can?“  She swore, quietly.

Frisk nodded at Toriel and put their hand on her arm, for a moment.  They were trying to comfort her.  

"Then  _you_  can do it, and we can all go home,” Undyne said.  

“N-no. I  _really_  can’t.  We, um - I still feel like a jerk for just saying it, but - we both worked on it for ages."  

Papyrus gave up on knocking and yelled, "SANS!  YOU HAVE VISITORS.” He opened the door.

Toriel stepped forward and went down first with Papyrus.  Her primary purpose was to heal, so she could not let herself hang back.  

Sans’ lab was entirely new to her.  It was  _fairly_  neat, despite a thin layer of dust on everything that hadn’t been touched recently. A tarp was set on the floor and pieces of machinery were set out on it, in an organized fashion that surprised her.  

The skeletal remnants of an enormous broken machine towered over the space.  The energy that came off of the thing, even broken, left her uneasy.  Toriel could not place the kind of magic that powered it, except that something she sensed reminded her of Sans.

The monster himself was nowhere to be seen.  "Sans?“ she called.  Had he run off again?

"hey, tori,” Sans said, from behind her.  He was on the steps leading upstairs and out.  

Toriel huffed.  She fought the urge to scold him, and lost.  "You have no idea how worried we have been, you old bag of bones!“  

Papyrus was visibly relieved when his brother made his reappearance.  The rest of their little group had followed right after Toriel, so they were all staring at Sans from the bottom of the stairs.  

Sans’ face was blank.

"Did you forget how to use a phone?”  Toriel continued.  She started to say something else, but stopped herself in time.  She took a deep breath.  

This was not the time.  Papyrus was speaking now and she listened without really hearing him.  She had come along for a reason, hadn’t she?

Toriel went over to Sans.  He was still on the steps, so they were almost eye-to-eye socket.  She gave him a brief examination, checking his HP and his general status.  Sans looked physically uninjured and he had no easy-to-spot symptoms of the types of illnesses he caught when he health was poor.  

He was at full health at the moment, not that it meant terribly much when he was at a single point.  

“should’ve practiced my routine if i knew i’d have such a big audience today,” Sans said.  

“You should’ve figured we’d be here eventually.”  Undyne put her hands on her hips.  "We’re here to drag your bony butt out of this stinkhole and back to the surface.“  

"eh.  thanks but no thanks.”

“You need a warm meal and to sleep in your own bed,” Toriel said.  

Grillby nodded.  He had been like a ghost since he heard Sans was all right. He hovered by the table that was covered in papers.  He hadn’t looked away from Sans since he appeared.  

“sounds great.”  Sans stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back onto his heels.  "i won’t be too much longer.“

"Right! ‘Cause you won’t be any longer!  If the healer says you need to go home and eat, that’s what’s gonna happen,” Undyne said.

Toriel recognized the risk.  The first thing they needed to do was keep Sans from disappearing to some new even more difficult to find hiding place.  

“That was not an order,” she said.  "It is what would be best, but it sounds as if you are not interested in leaving.“  

"heh.  believe me, tori, i’d love to hit the road,” Sans said, shrugging.  

It would be best for him to go home, but second best was just keeping him from running off again.  Toriel frowned.  Should she risk pressuring him into coming with him?  She had so little idea what was keeping him here.

“Uh…sorry for interrupting, but…”  Alphys knelt down next to the machine parts on the ground.  "Did you, um, get some idea how to fix this, Sans?"

The pause before Sans answer kept stretching until Toriel wasn’t sure if he was going to say anything at all.  Sans glanced at Papyrus before looking down.  "nah.  it’s busted for good.”

“Ok, good.”  Alphys stood up and brushed grime off her legs.

“real great."  

"N-no, I mean, um.  It sucks!  It really does, but, Sans, if you were staying to fix that, we might as well all move down here."  

"nah. it’s as broke as a guy walking out of a bakery.”  The pinpoints of light in his eye sockets suddenly clarified.  The light from them was sharp and piercing.  He was looking directly at Alphys.  

“So, uh, what’s the project?”  Alphys moved over to the papers by Grillby.  "N-no offense.  But if it’s just you and something you’re trying to build yourself, you’ll spend half the time trying to remember basic engineering."  She adjusted her glasses.  "Sorry, Grillby, but the glare, uh…”

He stepped back.

“Thank you."  

"been a couple years since school.  not really  _current_  on my electrical engineering."  

Toriel snorted.  

Alphys didn’t hear him.  "Oh my god!  This is going to break before you turn it on.”  She grabbed a pencil and started making changes.  

Sans stepped back up the stairs.  Before Toriel called out to him, he walked out from behind the old broken machine.  He stood next to Alphys.  

“yeah but if you fix that, will it work?” he asked.  

Toriel was still keeping close track of his health.  His HP ticked up by less than a full point - not much, but enough for Toriel to notice.

“Sure?”  Alphys glanced at him, and then looked back at the papers.  "You’ll have to tell me what it’s supposed to do, though, because all I can tell is that you forgot how to safely transmit energy and that this’ll generate a small magic field."  She frowned.  "And I can still barely read your handwriting."  

"can’t tell you.  but you’re sure?  it’ll work."  

"It will  _run_ , Sans,” Alphys said, sighing.  "I just have no idea if it will do what you want it to." 

He paused, again.  Toriel had the impression he just did not want to discuss this in front of everyone.  

"If we are going to be here for the night,” she said, “I believe it is time to make dinner.  Grillby, will you aid me?  Undyne, I am going to want to have a clear space outside for all of us to sit."  

Undyne did not want to leave Alphys alone, but Alphys spoke quietly to her, and she agreed to help.  Frisk went with them as well, to Toriel’s surprise.  

Frisk helped Undyne move a few rocks and then said they had to take care of some "human business."  

They left to, Toriel assumed, find a bush or a large enough rock for privacy.  A few minutes later, they sent Toriel a message saying they wanted to check something and would be back later.  They must have lied about their reason for leaving so that no one would insist on going with them.  Her messages asking about what they had to check were ignored.  

As ever, she had to accept that her child would do whatever they felt the need to do.  Toriel told herself not to worry.

Undyne stuck glowing spears in a circle around the space she had cleared. The snow melted down to the rock underneath around Grillby and the fire Toriel had built.  The temperature was tolerable, almost comfortable.  

After about half an hour, when the food was cooked and ready, Papyrus came upstairs.  He brought plates down to Alphys and Sans.  When he came back up, Undyne was ready with questions.

"How’s the nerd squad doing down there?”

“THE GREAT PAPYRUS…HAS…NO IDEA!”  His frustration was clear. “SANS WANTS TO LIVE OUT HIS SCIENCE FICTION FANTASIES, APPARENTLY.”

“Well, with Alphys helping him, they’ll be done in no time,” Undyne said.

“THAT WOULD BE A MIRACLE!”  He almost sounded bitter, but he took a deep unnecessary breath and shook it off.  "BUT MIRACLES HAPPEN EVERY DAY FOR PEOPLE WHO WORK HARD ENOUGH TO MAKE THEM REALITY."

"That’s the spirit!”

“WHERE?” Papyrus turned back towards Waterfall.  "I THOUGHT THEY HAD ALL MOVED TO THE SURFACE.“

Undyne laughed.  "You goober."  

Toriel was more than curious about what "science fiction” Sans and Alphys were engaged in.  She did not trust Alphys to exhibit the best judgment, especially while helping a friend.  Toriel would take her aside and speak with her alone.  She needed to be aware that they would find another way to help Sans if the machine he was building was dangerous or immoral.  

Grillby was another worry.  His typical silence made him as difficult to read as his husband.  The health of  _everyone_  in the group was her priority, she decided.

She leaned towards him.  "We should begin planning for when we take him home.“  Toriel kept her voice quiet.  

He started when she spoke.  After a minute, he nodded.  His fire died down to a soft red glow.

"He will need to see his doctor as soon as possible.”

“The guy Alphys sees is pretty nice,” Undyne said.  Toriel had meant to keep the conversation between herself and Grillby, and she had not meant  _that_  kind of doctor, but it was not a terrible suggestion.

“I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO CONVINCE HIM TO GO FOR…YEARS!  AT THIS POINT.” Papyrus squinted at the contents of the plate Grillby handed to him. “HE DOES NOT LISTEN.  EVEN TO HIS FAVORITE BROTHER!”

Grillby shook his head.  "……he saw someone, for a while.  He didn’t think it would work out, and he…didn’t want to disappoint you, Papyrus."  He spoke carefully.

Poor Papyrus.  He was dumbstruck.  Yet another thing he had not been told. Toriel needed to cook something he liked for him, as a comfort.  

Toriel had known about Sans’ three month stint and had not been surprised when he stopped going.  

"man, all these hangouts with the doc and i’m still the same height,” Sans said to her, once.

“You may be as shrunk as it is possible to be,” Toriel had said.

“yeah.  maybe there’s something better to do on my wednesdays."  

She had made an attempt to change his mind, she remembered.

"all that’s getting shrunk here is the contents of my wallet, tori.” He had never seen himself getting anything useful out of it.

“……he couldn’t be honest with them,” Grillby said, interrupting her thoughts like he had heard them and was correcting her.  

The fire Toriel had built crackled loud in the center of the circle of glowing blue spears Undyne kept active around them.  Grillby looked cold, compared to it.  

He continued to speak, almost agonizingly slow.  "There are…….things about the world that he learned when he was a scientist that he…feels obligated to keep from people.“  

"We are all adults,” Toriel said, prim.  "The world is not cotton candy and sugared snails, and it never has been."

She understood the urge to keep bad truths away from people who could be hurt by them, but she found that it often just caused more pain in the long run.  There had been a child whose pain she bitterly recognized now, after years of teaching children from all different walks of life.  If she had allowed herself to see that pain, back then, and to let that child know that she saw it - could she have changed things?  Could she have protected them?  Those were questions for late at night, when she could not find sleep.

”…yes."  His glasses pointed at her.  "…but what he learned is…central.  To his problems.  He...was sure he had to be dishonest, even with them, so it was never going to help."

"He seems to have at least been somewhat honest with you,” Toriel said, gently.

“…yes.”

“And you are also not going to share what he said with us.”

“……no, I’m not.”

Sans would not have spoken with someone who would just blurt it all out to everyone.

“…it’s more important that he be the one to say it, than that you know,” Grillby said.  

Toriel nodded.  "But of course you are too close to help him in the way that a healer might.  As am I, honestly.“  She remembered her angry reaction when she saw him again.  She sighed.  "And as are you, Papyrus.”

“APPARENTLY I WILL ALWAYS BE THE LAST TO KNOW, ANYWAY,” Papyrus said.

Grillby looked back down.  "You will always be his little brother.“

"OF COURSE I UNDERSTAND!"  

Toriel was not so much surprised that Papyrus was angry as she was that he was expressing it so honestly.  He and Sans were two sides of the same coin.  She was positive that if Sans were there, he would be acting completely different.    After all, Sans was his big brother, and Papyrus had to take care of him.

"Hey, if it cheers you up, Papyrus, I don’t understand shit about any of this.  No one told  _me_  anything, either.”  She patted him on the shoulder with a force that looked painful.  

Papyrus sighed.  "IT DOES.  THANK YOU.“

Undyne tapped her head.  "Hey!  What if Alphys uses her genius to build a robot he can tell all this shit to, and it doesn’t record it?  Sometimes people just have to  _practice_  being honest - train at it! -  before they can do it for real.  He could roleplay that he’s talking to his brother.  Alphys could program in all our voices!" She jumped to her feet and set up some more spears to make things brighter.  

"HMMMM…” Papyrus sighed.  "I APPRECIATE THE SUGGESTION, UNDYNE.  IT IS ON THE LIST.  BUT HE WOULD SHOW UP ONE DAY AND HE WOULD SAY, ‘my incredibly cool brother papyrus, i have had a breakthrough’ AND THEN HE WOULD SHOW ME HOW INSTEAD OF TALKING TO HIS ROBOT FRIEND HE SPENT HIS TIME REPROGRAMMING IT TO MAKE RUDE NOISES."

Toriel laughed.  "I think he would reprogram it to just have your voice say how cool  _he_ is."  

"THAT IS EVEN WORSE!  IF I TELL HIM HOW COOL HE IS, IT SHOULD BE BECAUSE HE HAS EARNED IT!”

“Ok, so there’s a fatal flaw in my plan, and it’s Sans himself,” Undyne said.  "But there HAS to be some way we can use cool robots to fix this."

"PERHAPS THE DARK LESSON WE WILL ALL HAVE TO LEARN FROM THIS IS THAT WE CANNOT USE COOL AND SEXY ROBOTS TO SOLVE ALL OUR PROBLEMS.”  Papyrus frowned.

“I don’t buy it!”  Undyne slammed her fist into a rock, breaking it.  "We just have to make it cooler!"

"And sexier, yes,” Toriel said, laughing.  They weren’t on the right track for a solution, but they had a better idea of the cause, so she found herself optimistic.  

What she wanted, she supposed, was for this to end up having been a warning to all of them.  If things were better later because they had figured something out here, then maybe they would be able to look back on the time they almost lost him and think “thank god it happened so we could fix it and make it better."  

Toriel had just been  _so sure_  he was dead.  She could not help her mood now.  He was still alive, so they would save him.  

–

"Um, so…d-don’t take this the wrong way, please?”  Alphys tapped her pen against her chin.  "I g-get that you’re, uh, fragile?"

"that’s me.”  Sans was over by his blueprints.  He sounded more tired than anything.

“No offense!  We all have bad days!  Weeks.  Um, months?”  She sighed and muttered under her breath.  "Dammit, Alphys, if you can’t do this at  _this_  point, you’re right in the middle of a bad  _life_."  She spoke up again.  "Um!  You know what I mean.”

“i’m a babybones and i’ll break if you say the wrong thing,” Sans said, deadpan.  “don’t tell me my shirt’s ugly or i’ll turn to dust right here."  

"Oh…shut up.  I’m being nice.”  It was difficult to coddle someone who didn’t want to be.  She just had to suck it up and be honest.  “But, um, in the nicest way possible, you still really suck at engineering.”  She gestured at some of his work. “If you built it just like this, it’d break immediately and fry at least one of the parts we have no way to replace.”  She took her pen and slashed at the paper.  The nib was in, so she didn’t leave a mark.  "Whoops, goodbye!  Hope you know how to rebuild a temporal stabilizer!  'cause it’s fried and half the electrical system’s been sent to last Thursday!  Whoops!"

"thanks.  heh.  great job not hurting my feelings.”

“Your shirt looks nice though.  Eheh."  

"can’t go wrong with number one grandma.”  Papyrus had brought along a sack of clothes for him.  He’d been badgered into putting on something clean.

Alphys wanted to help him, but she couldn’t work with this.  It wouldn’t help to build something that would just break, or immediately fail. It might improve his mood short term to just go along with his ideas, but long term it would be much more painful.  She knew what he was like after a project failed.  "We just have to start from square one!"  Alphys swept the blueprints off the table, and then balked.  "Oh, shoot, I didn’t mean to do that.  I need it to reference.”  She knelt down on the floor and started cleaning up.

“that was pretty cool, though.”  Sans looked away for a second.  "uh, you really planning to help out, here.  i thought the plan was to humor me and then drag me back up."

"That was one of the suggestions,” Alphys admitted.  "B-but, even if we could?  Papyrus and I talked it over and we think finishing this thing might help more than taking you back.  You could end up down here again.  Uh.  Even if you don’t want to, actually. Teleportation has an interesting fail condition, huh."

"it’s pretty neat.”

She stood back up.  

“look, you can say whatever you want about me, if you’re helping out,” Sans said.

“On one condition?  It’s not even an, um, ultimatum or anything.  It just can’t work otherwise.”

“i guess you need to know what you’re doing."  

"I just… _have_ to know what I’m helping make,” she agreed.  

“yeah.”  He sighed.  "didn’t feel like talking about it with the crowd here.“

"M-maybe your brother should know, but..”

“probably.”

Alphys adjusted her glasses.  "B-but, just tell me for now.  Ok."

"k. uh.”  He scrubbed his eyesockets with the flats of his hands. “so.  we’re doing pretty good these days, right?”

“Uh, I haven’t seen any indication of temporal anomalies  _myself_ , but, I guess I usually didn’t.”

“yeah. i meant broader, though.  with, heh, the broad.  and the rest of your life."  

"Oh!"  She laughed and stood up as straight as she could.  "Yeah!  We’re happy?  I hate to say it since that’s when everything likes to roll itself into a ball and toss itself in the trash, but…stuff’s pretty ok right now!"  

"same here.”  Before she could say anything else, he continued.  "i mean, obvious aside."

"Other than that huge glaring thing!”  She shook her head, laughing. “No, I know  _exactly_  what you mean.  Nothing’s  _wrong_  wrong.”

“there’s the usual life stuff, but, whatever.”  Sans’ eyesockets were dark, his voice dull.  She wanted to tell him he didn’t have to tell her, but she said nothing.  "there’s one bug up my ass i can’t deal with."

"Some things c-can’t be fixed, Sans.”  He had always only told her the bare minimum, but like now, there were things she had to know to actually try and help him.  There were also the things she had just picked up from knowing him, and from guessing.  

“ok.”  She wasn’t sure he had heard her, or that he was listening at all.  “when i got stuck down here, i started thinking about it, though, and i got an idea.”  He took his hand out of his pocket to gesture at the broken machine.  

“me and grillbz, we’ve had some fun.  and papyrus got to do so much of the stuff he always wanted to.  i’m ok with that, if something happened.  bro’ll be fine, no matter what, and i’ve talked about it with grillby and he sort of gets it.  just - i know this is dumb, so i don’t need to hear it - but those kids of bro’s are really bugging me.  like, i like 'em.  i want to see 'em do good for themselves. weird, right?”

“Sans…”

“heh.  if something happened, though, i don’t know.  they wouldn’t get another shot at it, like the rest of us.”

“I don’t understand why they wouldn’t."  

He told her, haltingly, why he had come down there in the first place. "so, sure, they’ll still be around, physically, if stuff goes the right way again.  but these kids that are part of my family, the kids my brother raised - they’d just be gone.  worse than dead.” He shrugged.  "kind of thing that keeps you up at night."

"G-god. What a horrible way to think about it!”  She didn’t want to think about her own children, and how some small change could make it so one or all of them were never born.  What if that had already happened?  She felt sick to her stomach.

“yeah, yeah, it’s a real pain,” Sans said, dismissive.  "but, i came up with something."  He started sorting through some papers.  These looked older.  "i came up with this idea a while ago, but i gave up on it pretty quick since i would’ve needed to take apart this piece of garbage.  wouldn’t do any good, anyway, not if i wanted to fix what was happening.  might be good for something else, though.”

She didn’t bother looking at his notes.  At at glance she could tell that it would take an hour to decipher his handwriting.  Instead, she looked over the blueprints.  

“can’t stop things from starting over.  but maybe i can, uh…keep those two going when the rest of us move back."  

“Is that actually possible?"  

He shook his old notes.  The pages were yellowing, almost brittle. "yeah.”

“Sans, would they even want to…to keep going, when everything else is…different?"  

"i mean, the other option is, uh, sort of like dying, but i guess i’d ask first.”

“I hope so!  I don’t know if I’d want that, even if…or maybe I would. I d-don’t know.”  She rubbed under her glasses.  “Just them?”

“yeah. might be enough for a third person, but, eh.  alph, i dunno.  maybe this means i’m not a great guy, but i don’t care that much about everyone else.  _we’re_  all still going to be around, basically the same.  you and the dogs and everyone will have your kids again, eventually.  if i know those two aren’t going to just be gone one day, well, i think i could sleep better at night.”  He shrugged.  

She stared down at his plans.  "I don’t really like this, Sans.“

"it’s up to you, if you help out.  i’m easy.”

“Of course I’m helping.”  She scoffed.  "I’m not letting someone do weird experiments with time in a basement with no one to point out when you’re going overboard!"

He set the papers down.  "…thanks."

"And apparently I need keep you from electrocuting yourself.”  She sighed.  

“i mean it.  thank you.”  He looked up at her.  

Her head was buzzing with the hundreds of ways this could go wrong.  “You’re welcome, I guess.  I haven’t done anything yet. So…uh, let’s just get started!”

“got it."  

How was she going to explain this to Undyne?  


	15. Chapter 15

Alphys tiptoed up the stairs.  She could hear her friends talking and occasionally laughing right outside.  

They had been prepared to spend some time clearing out the cave and looking for Sans, so they had food and supplies for a couple weeks. 

Still, they hadn’t wanted to spend that much time down there.  

“…um."  Sans’ basement door let her out right by the front of the house. She stood by the door and cleared her throat.  

The group went quiet.  Alphys noticed that Frisk wasn’t with them.  She must have caught them when they were off doing necessary human things.  

"Do you have news for us, Doctor?”  Toriel rarely called her by her title.  She must be in her good graces, for once.

“…yes, b-but…”  There were  _way_  too many people looking at her. It made it hard to put her words in order.  "I was thinking…w-we should…“  She looked down for a second, and when she looked back up, she deliberately kept her eyes on Undyne.  

Undyne grinned and gave her a double thumbs up.  She mouthed, "You’re doing great!"  

"Maybe we should stick around for a little while?  Well, or I should.  This thing isn’t getting built in a couple hours.”

“What is it?”  Undyne asked.

Alphys had a feeling Sans was eavesdropping.  "It’s…complicated.  But I think once it’s done, Sans will be able to go home, and he can take me.  If you want to, you guys can go back.“  

"I AM STAYING.”  Papyrus looked a little creepy lit up by the big bonfire and Undyne’s spears.  

“I figured.”  She sighed.

“I would still prefer to keep a close eye on his health,” Toriel said.  "And Frisk is…off doing something that I am sure is of great importance.  I will not leave without them.“

"They left?”

“Do you have any idea how long we’re talking?” Undyne asked.

Alphys shook her head.  "A week?  That’s my best guess, until we  _really_ get started.“  

Papyrus stood up and brushed the dirt off his legs.  "SINCE YOU ARE UP HERE, AND HE MAKES POOR DECISIONS WHEN HE IS ALONE, I WILL GO KEEP AN EYE ON HIM.”

“Like, we should keep watch?”  Undyne asked.  She nodded her approval.  “That makes sense. Anyway, there’s no way I’m leaving yet!”

Alphys’ smile felt a tiny bit wobbly.  "You don’t h-have to.  But…I’m glad."  That left…  

Grillby was sitting very close to the fire.  She started to ask him, but he just stared at her, and she decided not to bother.  

"Well, if we are spending more than one night, I am not interested in sleeping on mud and rocks,” Toriel said.  "Not when there is a town full of beds.“

"I call dibs on Papyrus’ racecar bed!” Undyne called.

Papyrus stopped walking.  "THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE…NO ONE HAS VACCUUMED IN THERE IN….“  He shuddered.  "YOU CAN HAVE IT!"  

"Maybe the Inn?” Toriel suggested.  "There should be enough beds.“

"It’d be cool to stay in my own place again, if it hadn’t burned to the ground,” Undyne said.  

“Y-yeah, the Inn is probably good for tonight,” Alphys said.  She had packed up and taken her bed with her when she left the Underground.  Once she made a bed big enough for her and Undyne, she’d used the parts of the old box for other projects.  

Everyone got up and they went together to see how intact that part of town was.  The Inn was dirty inside, but seemed in better shape than a number of other buildings.  

Grillby left them for a few minutes to peek into his old bar.  The roof over there was in terrible shape and the main window was shattered.  

“Ok, here’s the plan,” Undyne said.  "You, Alphys, your job is to take care of Sans.  You, Papyrus, Toriel, and his husband are on that team.  My job is to take care of you and Papyrus.  Everybody’s getting a full 8 hours sleep every night, got it?  And you’re eating healthy!  We brought food, so we don’t have to loot chips out of vending machines until we’re sick!"

"I will help with this,” Toriel said, amused.  "And I will also be in charge of Frisk."

"Yeah. Someone has to track that little brat down.  Did they think we really needed someone else to worry about right now?  If I didn’t know they could take care of themselves, I’d be freaking out!”

“If they are not back soon, I will walk down to the Ruins.  I suspect they went down that way."  

Grillby didn’t make any noise when he came into the Inn, but the space brightened and the room quickly turned a comfortable temperature.

"So, we all know what our jobs are?”  Undyne asked.  "You!“   She pointed at Grillby.  

He looked alarmed, like he usually did when Undyne addressed him directly.

"You’re on team ‘take care of Sans!’  Got it?"

He nodded.  

"Right now we are all on team 'make sure we can actually sleep here,’” Toriel said, gently.

“Ok, but, uh, I need to get back,” Alphys said.

Toriel nodded.  "Then, the rest of us."

"If you aren’t back in three hours to sleep, it’s my job to go down there and drag you to bed!”  Undyne warned.  

“I think it’s P-papyrus you should worry about, there,” Alphys said.

“Yeah.” She sighed.  "No shit.  But just because it’s going to suck doesn’t mean I’m going to let him get off easy!“  

Grillby started walking to the rooms.

"Oh, Grillby, dear, look over the floor before you step on it,” Toriel said, going after him.  "We don’t know how stable things are."

For the moment, Alphys and Undyne were alone.  

"Hey.” Undyne came over.  "I was serious about taking care of you being my job.  You ok?"

"Y-yeah.  I’m ok, Undyne.”

“This thing you’re building it…isn’t dangerous right?  You weren’t sending us off because of that?”

“Me?” She laughed.  "Neither of us are that brave!  Sans isn’t in his basement building like, a, uh death machine.  My big worry is that it won’t work."

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.  If she thought about it, she could also worry that  they would accidentally somehow destroy the normal progression of time, or that they’d all be teleported into the future when they were old.  She didn’t really like messing with time, and she knew that science could go wrong in ways they couldn’t predict.  

But, logically, the most likely bad thing to happen would be that it wouldn’t work, and then Sans wouldn’t have that idea to give him hope.  

"Keep us updated.”

“When I’m not so jumbled, I’ll…explain more about it?  Okay?  I don’t want to keep things a secret, and Sans knows he’ll have to tell Papyrus eventually.”

“Okay."   Undyne looked her over, considering, and then grasped her shoulders. "Go do your science, babe!  And tell me about it tomorrow. Don’t hold off forever.”

“You’re so good to me, Undyne.”

“Yup!"  She grinned.  "Just giving back what I’ve gotten!”  She kissed Alphys, brief but sweet.  "You have two hours and forty minutes before I show up to drag you by your sweet little tail to bed.  Got it?"

Alphys laughed.  "I got it, Undyne.”

She left the warmth of the Inn.  Right outside, the ground was covered in snow everywhere other than where Grillby had walked.  She followed in his footsteps back to Sans and Papyrus’ house, just to keep her toes from freezing.  


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C/N: **Major mental illness content note** for the part in Sans’ POV. (On top of the general one for the whole fic)

Grillby felt as useful as a bonfire at an ice cap family picnic.  He had barely seen Sans in the two days they had all been underground.  

Toriel was keeping an eye on his health, Alphys was helping him with his strange project, and Undyne was keeping an eye on Alphys.  Frisk, he thought, was trying to figure out why there had been a cave-in.  Papyrus was - he was Papyrus.  He was essential.  

There were things Grillby would have done, if he could even get near Sans without him suddenly needing something elsewhere.  He cooked for him, but Toriel was perfectly capable of making things that Sans liked.  

Maybe he would see if Undyne wanted to go home with him and check up on the kids.  He didn’t want to leave, but he was useless and at least he could give Papyrus’ children a better idea what was happening.

He wasn’t quite ready to give up.  The skeleton brothers’ old home was a horrible dusty mess.  He would make sure it was liveable if they were going to spend a few more days there.  Papyrus might actually sleep if his room was clean.  He just complained that it was filthy but he was too busy to do anything about it.  

Grillby knocked on the door to their house.  It felt odd to knock but odder not to.  He lived with them, but never  _here_.  He’d never even seen the inside of Sans’ old bedroom.  Papyrus got a haunted look whenever he spoke of it.  

“COME IN!”

He hadn’t been expecting a response.  Papyrus and Sans were supposed to be at Alphys’ lab.  Toriel had been sleeping and spending most of her time at the Inn.  She and Grillby had the kitchen and bedrooms there sparkling.  

Grillby opened the door and peered in.

“OH, GRILLBY, EXCUSE ME!  YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOCK.  BUT…YOU ALSO SHOULDN’T OPEN THE DOOR YOURSELF IF YOU DO?”  Papyrus was sitting on the couch. He looked confused.  "I MUST HAVE LEFT MY MANNERS AT THE LAB WHEN I WAS LOCKED OUT!“

”…“

"UNDYNE INFORMED ME THAT I WAS ‘HOGGING HER SHIFT’ AND SHE THREW ME OUT.  AND THEN LOCKED THE DOOR.  AND THEN CALLED ME AND TOLD ME TO TAKE A NAP. AND THEN CALLED REPEATEDLY TO MAKE SURE I WAS DOING AS SHE SAID.”

Grillby nodded. Papyrus was probably being literal when he said Undyne threw him, but he appeared uninjured.  "…you  _should_.“  

Papyrus’ phone went off.  He answered it before the second ring.  "YET AGAIN, HELLO! OF COURSE I ALWAYS APPRECIATE HEARING FROM YOU.  BUT NOW GRILLBY IS ALSO HERE TO NAG ME.  IN THE CARING AND AFFECTIONATE WAY OF - ”

Undyne said something about Papyrus being “flanked.”  "Just accept you can’t win!“  Grillby was still by the door and he could hear her clearly.

"I WILL HAVE A MUCH EASIER TIME RESTING IF YOU TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF YOUR SHIFT SERIOUSLY.”

Undyne told him that it was boring, and then spoke much quieter.  

“I LOVE YOU TOO!  GOODBYE!”  Papyrus hung up and sighed.  

“…if you want to be a good example…”

“I HAVE ALREADY BEEN DEFEATED.  THE GREAT PAPYRUS, LAID LOW BY THE CARE AND CONSIDERATION OF HIS DEAREST FRIENDS.  A TERRIBLE FATE!” Papyrus took off his shoes and pulled his legs up onto the couch.

“……your room is still…?”

Papyrus shuddered.  

Grillby rolled up his sleeves.  "…that’s why I’m here.“

"OH.  I ASSUMED UNDYNE CALLED YOU HERE TO FLANK MY POSITION.  I GENUINELY APPRECIATE IF YOU CAME HERE TO CLEAN."  

Grillby nodded.  He took a bottle of spray cleaner out of his inventory to demonstrate his resolve.

"AND NOW EVERYTHING WILL SMELL LIKE GREASE AND ASHES, SO IT WILL BE JUST LIKE HOME.”

He couldn’t tell if Papyrus was being sarcastic.  

“I MEAN THIS IS HOME, OF COURSE, BUT - !”  He frowned.  "NO IT IS NOT.  HOW STRANGE.“  

Grillby had tried to visit his own apartment, and thought he understood what Papyrus was saying.  He nodded.  The floor hadn’t been stable enough for someone flammable to risk walking on for long.  What he  _had_  been able to see had left him uneasy.  

"OF COURSE YOU UNDERSTAND.”

Grillby started towards the stairs.

“GRILLBY?”

He stopped and turned back towards Papyrus.  There had been a note of vulnerability in his voice.  Did Papyrus need a story read, or a blanket?  Grillby couldn’t do much about the first thing, but he was sure he could find an old blanket around somewhere.

“I HAVE A QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO.  A, WELL, A  _PERSONAL_ QUESTION."  

He nodded.

Papyrus was quiet for a minute, thinking.  Carefully considering his phrasing, perhaps.

"HOW DO YOU HANDLE BEING SO MOODY?”

Not as much care as it needed, apparently.  Grillby rubbed his head.

Papyrus didn’t seem to notice.  "YOU MOST LIKELY HAVE NOTICED THAT I HAVE BEEN VERY ANGRY!  ALL THE TIME!  I HAVE EVEN BEEN SNAPPING AT UNDYNE, WHO ONLY WANTS THE BEST FOR ME.“  Papyrus looked distressed.  "BUT I HAVE NOTICED THAT DESPITE YOUR CONSTANT IRRITATION, YOU ALWAYS SEEM VERY CALM.”

“…….”

“…IT IS POSSIBLE I COULD HAVE WORDED THAT IN A DIFFERENT WAY.”

Grillby shrugged and sat down on the arm of the ancient couch.  "…how to be angry without lashing out?“

"THE GREAT PAPYRUS WOULD NEVER HARM ANOTHER PERSON.”

“Not physically, but…I know what you mean.”

Papyrus sat up and made room for Grillby to sit next to him, properly.

“Are you avoiding going to sleep?”

“THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT.”

Grillby laughed. “…either way.”  He considered his answer, and spoke carefully.  "What I do, Papyrus, is I find other ways to expend the energy.  Or I…talk to a…trusted friend.  Most things I am angry about…don’t need to be dealt with directly.  But they can’t sit.“

"I SEE.” He was squinting.  Papyrus probably had no idea what to do with what he was being told.  Or he was having trouble hearing him.

“Your brother is…very good at listening.”  Sometimes Grillby had to complain about customers, but he still wanted them to come by and spend money. Having someone to complain to was one of the top best reasons to get married, in his opinion.  "…he doesn’t expect me to do anything.  I can just complain.“

"I CAN SEE HOW THAT IS SOMETHING HE IS GOOD AT.”

“…but when he  _does_  think I should do something…”

“THEN IT MUST BE SERIOUS!”

He nodded. “Papyrus…if you are angry at Sans, you can tell me.  I can listen.”

“I AM NOT ANGRY AT SANS,” Papyrus said, immediately.  He looked up at a long crack in the ceiling.  "WHY WOULD I BE?  HE HAS BEEN DOING HIS BEST.  APPARENTLY HE EVEN CAME HERE ORIGINALLY BECAUSE HE THOUGHT HE COULD DO SOMETHING THAT WOULD HELP.  HE IS TRYING VERY HARD.“ His hand twitched and he moved it to the arm of the couch, tapping restlessly.  "HE READ EVERY SELF HELP BOOK THAT I GAVE HIM.  HE DID NOT TELL ME THAT HE DID, BUT HE WOULD MAKE A JOKE ABOUT SOMETHING HE READ IN THEM.  HE EVEN ATTEMPTED THERAPY, WHICH I ADMIT THAT EVEN I, THE EVER OPTIMISTIC PAPYRUS, WAS POSITIVE HE WOULD NEVER DO.  I UNDERESTIMATED HIM IN THAT REGARD.  BUT WE ARE STILL HERE.  I AM NOT ANGRY WITH HIM.”

“…with yourself?”  For his suggestions not seeming to help?

“NOT PARTICULARLY?  I AM NOT SURE WHAT ELSE IT WAS POSSIBLE TO DO WITHOUT MAKING THINGS WORSE.  I AM ANGRY AT…”  He was quiet.  He didn’t look entirely sure of his answer.  "…JUST…THE SITUATION?  WE HAVE DONE SO MUCH.  THINGS SHOULD BE BETTER THAN THEY ARE!“

Grillby understood that feeling completely.  Papyrus, however, held very tightly to the idea that there was some fairness and order to things.  If people tried hard enough, everything would turn out all right.  There was no such thing as a problem without a solution.  Whether he really believed that, or he just believed it would only be true if people believed it, Grillby was not sure.  It mostly amounted to the same thing.  

"Yes.”  He nodded, firm.  "This is…bullshit.“

"YES!  IT IS EXACTLY THAT WORD YOU USED THAT I CANNOT BECAUSE I AM A CARETAKER FOR CHILDREN!  IT IS 200% EXACTLY THAT THING.”

“I won’t tell the kids.”

Papyrus frowned. “OK.  IF YOU THINK IT WILL HELP.”  He took a deep breath. “THIS IS CRAP!  I HATE IT!”  He gripped the cloth of the couch.  "YES, THAT IS IT.  I HATE HATE HATE HATE  _ **HATE**_  IT.“  He made a fist and pounded it on the arm of the couch.  A puff of dust flew into the air.  Papyrus violently waved it away.  

”…yes.  I hate it, too.  I can pour you a drink, if you want.“  Grillby took a bottle out of his inventory.

"PREPARED TO BARTEND AT ALL TIMES.  HOW ADMIRABLE!  NO THANK YOU.”

Grillby shrugged and poured a glass for himself.

“NOW IT IS MY TURN,” Papyrus said.  "SINCE SANS IS CURRENTLY INCAPABLE OF LISTENING AND MANY OTHER THINGS AT THE MOMENT, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR MANY FEELINGS.“  

Grillby sipped his drink.  He had a number of things on his mind, but one worry was prominent.  "Has he said why he’s avoiding me?”

“HE IS AVOIDING EVERYONE.”

Grillby shook his head.  "He…leaves whenever I approach him.  He doesn’t do that with anyone else.“

"OH.  I DID NOT NOTICE, SO I HAVE NO IDEA.  I CAN ASK HIM.”

“…no.  I’ll ask him myself.  At a better time.”

“OH!  I AM SUPPOSED TO LISTEN, NOT MAKE SUGGESTIONS.”

“You’re fine.” He finished his drink.  "Now go to sleep.  So I can clean.“

Papyrus sighed.  "I do have to be a positive example.”

Grillby nodded.  He slipped the glass and bottle back into his inventory and stood up so Papyrus could have the whole couch again.  

“I DO FEEL BETTER.  BUT REMEMBER YOUR PROMISE.  YOU WILL NEVER TELL THE CHILDREN THAT I SAID A RUDE WORD."  

”…I remember.“  He climbed upstairs.  Maybe he still had a use, even if Sans didn’t want to see him.

–

Sans was too tired to bother with the stairs.  He had just eaten, but felt sick in the place where a stomach would be if he had one.  Maybe sleep would help.  Probably not.

He was already half in bed in his skull when he passed from the front door of his old house into his bedroom.  It took him a second to register that Grillby was already there.  

The mattress was stripped bare as per usual, but the bundle of sheets and blankets was off now, too.  Grillby dropped a clean looking sheet onto the floor when Sans suddenly appeared.  

"oh.  hey.” Sans needed to get out of there.  "uh.  forgot something.“

Grillby could move quickly when he wanted to.  They weren’t far apart to start with and Grillby closed that small gap before Sans finished talking.  He grasped the top of Sans’ arms with white hot hands.  

Sans couldn’t read him at all, for a second.  He wasn’t giving off any of the usual signs of him being angry, but Sans found himself sure that he must be.  Maybe he wanted Grillby to be angry with him.  

”…Sans.“ Smoke filled up the small space of the bedroom.  No, Grillby wasn’t angry.  It was much worse than that.  "Sans, what did I do?  I should have helped earlier - I should have done more - I just - I had no idea what to do.”  He was crying.  Choking black smoke made it impossible to see anything but each other.  

“nah, man, grillby, it’s on me here.  i figured it’d get better on its own.” Sans wished he hadn’t nodded off at his desk so many times Alphys threw him out.  There was no avoiding this conversation forever, though.  Probably.  

“…you’ll speak to your brother, Toriel, even  _Undyne_ , but not me?  Sans, what did I do?  Why are you avoiding me?”

“i’m not - ”

Grillby loudly swore his denial of Sans’ blatant lie.  The heat in the room would have been unbearable if Sans wasn’t cold bone.  

“ok.  ok!  got it.  none of that crap right now.”  Sans felt warm for the first time in weeks.  "i’m just not at my best right now.  feels bad making you deal with that.“

”…“

”…yeah, not a great way to try and be nice to you, huh?  looking at it now.  heh.“

Grillby shook his head.  

Sans pulled his arms free and stepped back.  He had come up to his room to sleep, and he hadn’t stopped being exhausted.  

He noticed that Grillby had somehow managed to squeeze into one of Sans’ aging NASA sweaters.  The sleeves were rolled up to hide that they didn’t reach all the way to his wrists.  

Grillby picked up the sheet he had dropped on the floor and started making the bed.  He had found some clean pillows and a blanket, so the mattress almost looked like a normal bed when he was done.  

Sans stood by and watched.  "knew this would mess you up,” he said, quiet. “sorry."  

The smoke started to clear out.  Grillby had opened a window before Sans came in.  

"uh.  i said to myself, 'grillbz, he’ll put up with anything, but if you walk out, that’ll be it for him.’”  Sans knew he should keep quiet. Grillby had already accepted his half-true explanation for why he was avoiding him.  

“…yes?” Grillby tipped his head.  "Who wants his husband to leave him?“

"you really just need one thing from me, and i kinda…"  

Grillby came over and gently directed him to the made bed.  He pulled down the blankets (why had he bothered to make them neat in the first place?) and set him down.  He took off Sans’ shoes for him.  He seemed to be working from the idea that if he didn’t know what to do to help in a bigger way, he could at least make sure Sans slept on clean sheets.  

Sans suddenly wanted him to get what he was trying to say.  The need came from nowhere and hit him so hard he thought he might throw up.  "maybe i don’t work as hard as i could, maybe i’ve got my moods, maybe i play some great pranks that you aren’t really into.  but, uh, i’m around. that’s more of a big deal for you than it should be.  people shouldn’t leave you since you’re obviously a really cool guy.  but they have.  so me hanging around was like the best thing about me. after my good looks, i guess."  

"It was important,” Grillby acknowledged.  He acted like he though that Sans was just rambling, but was perfectly happy to let him go ahead. He pushed at Sans’ shoulder, letting him know it was time to lay down, and he tugged a blanket over him once he was settled in. Grillby sat on the edge of the mattress and bent his legs to take off his own shoes.  

“yeah.  so, uh - ” When Sans thought through the words he was about to say, pain stabbed in the back of his eye sockets.  His voice was thick with exhaustion.  "after we get home and i’m ok again, if you look over all of this, and at what i did, and you can’t put up with me anymore, well.  i get it.“  He shrugged.  "i won’t try to stop you.”

Grillby could stare like he was looking right through Sans’ eyesockets at the back of his skull.  He could do that without even the suggestion of eyes.  Sans wasn’t sure if it was a talent, or a learned skill.  

He didn’t want to hear what Grillby was going to say.  Sans rested his head back on the pillow and inhaled the last of the smoke still hanging around them.

The mattress shifted and Grillby joined him under the blanket.  "…I am not leaving you for this.“  He stated it plainly.

"yeah, but if you change your mind when you aren’t worried about me, i’m just telling you.  it’s fine."  

"Is this…because of my parents?”  there was genuine confusion in his voice.

“wanting a guy who’ll stick around isn’t too much to ask, man.”  Maybe Sans wanted him to go, so he could deaden the part of him that was guilty all the time.

There really wasn’t much room on the mattress for two monsters, but there was enough for each of them to have their own space, if Grillby wanted it.  

He tugged Sans close and spoke into his ear.  "…first of all, I don’t 'put up’ with you, and I never have.“  He sighed.  "And I’m not a child anymore.  You were gone for two weeks, not half my life.  You stayed with me when I was sick, and when my mother passed away, and when I dealt with it by working all the time.  I don’t…”  He trailed off.  He held Sans very tightly as he carefully picked out his words. “You said something like, that  _this_ _,_ our marriage _,_  would 'last as long as it lasts.’  I’ve never known quite what that was supposed to mean.  I didn’t leave you the first time you were sick, or any of the other times.  I didn’t leave when you didn’t want to have children.”  He paused, ticking off a mental list.  "I didn’t even leave when you turned me green for a week.  Or…any of the times you’ve lied to me.  Maybe this is 'as long as it lasts’ for you, but for me…that always meant for the rest of our lives.“  When he spoke again, it sounded like he was partially talking to himself.  "Can I make you understand this, for once?  This isn’t an…obligation?  Or pride.  I want to stay with you because I  _know_  you, and I love you, still."  

Sans listened carefully.  It was difficult picking out words, sometimes, when Grillby tried to say too much all at once.

Grillby spoke a little slower.  ”……there isn’t a part of me, not even a single speck of dust that doesn’t want to be with you for the rest of my life.“  

Sans felt separate from himself.  His head was buzzing.

"And do you know why?”

“you love me,” Sans said, quiet, when it was clear Grillby was waiting for an answer.

“No.  Because  _you_  love  _me_.  You…you want to diminish it because it can hurt, but you… _can’t_  diminish it.  You want this forever, and you want it as a promise, and I  _am_  promising you, Sans.  I am  _here_.  'As long as it lasts’ is forever, and that is what it always meant."  

There was smoke in Sans’ skull, in his rib cage, in his clothes.  "that’s…a lot.” He had absolutely no clue what to say to any of this.

For the first time, Grillby sounded angry.  "I’m not leaving you for being sick! Sans, sometimes I think you want me to be an asshole.  It’d be more comfortable.“  

Grillby could sure read him.  "you’re a real jerk for not being a jerk, grillbz.”

“God!  You leave for a couple weeks, we find you with half a hit point alone on the wrong side of a cave-in, and you’re worried it’s going to bring up my…my…childhood abandonment issues?”  He made a frustrated sound.  "Sure!  But this is you at your worst, and you’re still - you still care about me that much?  Sans, you’re a good person!  I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this! Sure, there are things you could do that would make me leave you, but I can still say I never would because I  _know_  you’d never do that to me.“  He moved his hand so he was gripping Sans’ hip bone.  "It hurts you so much to care about people, but you love me anyway.”  He sounded frustrated.  "Ok?“  

"ok.”

“Are you…are you hearing me?  Should I slow down?  I will.  If I have to write this all down and…tape it to your face, I  _will_."  

"nah.  i hear you.”  Sans wasn’t sure Grillby believed him.  "grillby, i hear you!  promise.  it’s just, what the hell’s a skeleton supposed to say to all that?“

"Tell me you love me,” he said, immediately.  "And…that you-you’ll try to get better.  Please.“

"aw, jeez.  you got me.  bullseye.  i love you.  still.  forever.  uh.  i really wish i wasn’t like this.  hate that all of you had to -  ” He broke off and pressed his face hard against the place where Grillby’s shoulder met his neck.  "this is really, uh, embarrassing. grillby, sorry, i’ve - “  His eyesockets felt hot around the edges, and then wet.  

There was a hissing noise and he pulled away before he got his embarrassing tears all over a guy made out of fire.

"It’s not real water. It’s fine.  It doesn’t hurt.”

“hey, uh.” Sans sniffed and rubbed at his leaking nose hold.  "that lie was a doozy.“  

"Ok, it just stings a little.  It’s fine.”  Grillby kept trying to tug him close.  "I need to comfort you.“  

"k, just, uh, let me…”  They fumbled around until they grabbed a pillowcase they could use as a barrier.  

Sans tried to stop crying.  It was strange, because other than the occasional stab of something, he didn’t feel all that upset.  But the tears kept pouring out anyway, in a constant near-silent river punctuated by little gasps when the pain hit.  

With Grillby holding onto him, without enough time and room to make distance, the painful bursts refused to subside.  They stretched out longer, getting closer to each other until he couldn’t stop hurting.  Grillby made soothing crackling noises at him and stroked the back of his head.  It just kept coming.

And nothing was fair.  Everything and everyone Sans cared about was going to come to an end, and there wasn’t an ounce of justice or goodness in the whole damn world that hadn’t been dragged scraping and kicking from the random and meaningless universe, but he couldn’t stop caring about them.  It wasn’t fair.  He should at least get to not give a shit, right?

Sans felt warmth, a burst of heat on the top of his skill, as Grillby kissed him.  He murmured something that was meant to be comforting, but Sans couldn’t make any sense of it.  

And then he heard a noise, a low guttural moan that rose almost to a wail, and Sans knew it was coming from himself.  He pressed his face even harder against the pillowcase.  The pain from before hadn’t stopped because what he felt before had just been a trickle.  The whole of it washed over him then, and Grillby, and the room went cold and dark.  The walls cracked, the lamp burst, and it didn’t seem like it was ever going to end.  

But it did.  Grillby held onto him until it was over, and he was quiet.  


End file.
